BRM Reviews the 5/11/2020 Raw (WEIRD)

[Big Red Machine]

Holy crap they actually explained that both Rey Mysterio Jr. and Aleister Black landed on a “secondary roof” and thus escaped serious injury. Escaped it so much, in fact, that they’re cleared to wrestle tonight. I’m happy they explained that these two weren’t dead, but if you’re going to tell me over and over again that “the risk is worth the reward,” maybe you could actually have them be a little hurt after “only” falling onto a secondary roof and not wrestle the next day?


OPENING SEGMENT- Um… what the f*ck is going on? Is the reason the seeming death of Rey and Aleister was addressed because I fell into some alternate dimension? Why else would Becky Lynch be carrying the MITB briefcase when the last time we saw her she was Raw women’s champion and Asuka won the MITB briefcase in a match that Becky wasn’t even in?
Becky is all teary-eyed and tells us that she had talked to “the decision-makers around here” about “raising the stakes” of the MITB match. “Decision-makers,” huh? Those would be Vince, Steph, and Hunter, right (Shane lost his power last summer)? We saw two of those people last night during the match, and at no point was any of this even mentioned.
Becky starts giving what feels like a retirement speech but it’s clearly not a retirement speech or she wouldn’t have the MITB briefcase. She thanks the fans for caring about her and carrying her on their shoulders and tells us all that she “has to go away for a while.”
Asuka then comes out and rants, and if I’m reading their conversation correctly, Asuka seems surprised that Becky now has her briefcase. Did management just take it away from Asuka without telling her what’s going on?
As you’ve probably guessed right now, last night’s match was actually for the Raw Women’s Title. Said belt was in the briefcase the whole time, and Asuka was unable to open the briefcase because, I guess WWE wanted Becky to reveal this on TV as a surprise? So Asuka has been the champion for twenty-two and a half hours without even knowing it?
Asuka started dancing around like a goof before Becky starts talking again and confirms my guess: She’s pregnant (what else could it be? She can’t travel to be with a sick family member, and if she were sick, they wouldn’t let her in the building). They hugged and Asuka was happy for Becky.

I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but I didn’t like this at all. It felt like WWE was complicit in going through this ridiculous set-up just so Becky could make the big reveal of having handed the title over and Becky’s speech bent over backwards to put Asuka over as a worthy successor. On the one hand I feel like I should praise WWE because they clearly did put a lot of thought into coming up with reasons for 99% of this work/make sense. Asuka didn’t know the belt was in there because they never gave her the key to unlock the briefcase, Becky checked with officials before the match so that this title change could be official. Pretty much the only question they didn’t answer is why they decided not to advertise that this was now a title match (if I wanted to be nice I could fill in a blank for them and say that Asuka took the briefcase to WWE officials today upon realizing that she shouldn’t open it and they should they would get it open for her, only for them to give it to Becky to do her big reveal), they had Becky put Asuka over as “the only one who could beat me” to establish Asuka’s credibility as a successor.
The only problem is there was a much better way to accomplish all of this: Have Asuka cash in and then just tap Becky out in seconds. Becky doesn’t even have to bump or have anything happen anywhere near her stomach.
In my mind, this has the following advantages:
1. As I mentioned above, you avoid the ridiculous set-up of all of this.
2. You get to deliver on the advertised confrontation between Becky and the MITB winner.
3. You don’t break the lineage of the title.
4. I know we fans are not expected/supposed to think about questions like this, but if Becky is pregnant, then who’s the father? Seth Rollins, right? They were an on-screen couple and we never heard that they broke up… which means that Becky, our babyface hero, has been dating the person we have been told is the world’s largest douchebag for the past six months.
If you have Becky lose a quick match, then say she’s going to go away to train harder so she can get her title back, then have her announce that she’s pregnant next week, you can avoid the kayfabe awkwardness because Seth will likely be a babyface at that point, and you can credit them getting “back together” “a few weeks ago” as part of Seth turning babyface.

A BUNCH OF BABYFACES CONGRATULATE BECKY LYNCH ON BEING PREGNANT- Anyone who thought my point about heel Seth being the father of babyface Becky’s child wasn’t something we’re supposed to think about needs to explain to me why WWE made sure that all of the twelve people who showed up to congratulate Becky on her big announcement were babyfaces.

NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: Bobby Lashley vs. Humberto Carrillo- 4/10
This was announced as a “no disqualifications match where anything goes.” You know… as opposed to the no DQs match where some things still aren’t allowed. Actually, not everything goes in most no DQs matches. For example, you can’t pin someone on the outside. But you couldn’t do that in this match, either, so this match was not, in fact, “everything goes” like the ring announcer inexplicably decided to introduce it out.
The announcers must have told us that this was a no DQs match at least six times in the one hundred seconds between the bell ringing and the first commercial. The match itself only wound up going about eight minutes, of which half of that was during a commercial but it was put together pretty well, and Lashley winning with a new finisher (the Masterlock) in dominant fashion definitely makes this win feel like the beginning of something big for him. The execution on that spot where Lashley grabbed a chair and Carrillo came off the apron with a dropkick to give him the Van Daminator was absolutely beautiful.

PROMOS FOR THE STREET PROFITS VS. THE VIKING RAIDERS… IN A GAME OF BASKETBALL- yes, really
This was dumb. I want to see wrestlers have wrestling matches. I don’t care who is better at any other form of competition. That’s not what this show is about. I’m not going to say that I didn’t find some of the lines they said here funny, but I don’t want to see the “match,” they’re shooting these promos for.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS ASUKA- bad
Kairi Sane came by and they both acted like cartoon characters. Remember when these two were a part of the show that wasn’t embarrassing?

ZELINA VEGA’S CREW ARGUE WITH EACH OTHER BACKSTAGE- got its point across and didn’t stay too long

AKIRA TOZAWA vs. ANGEL GARZA (w/Zelina Vega, Austin Theory, & Andrade “Cien” Almas)- 2/10
This match started during a commercial. When we first joined it, we were immediately hit with two idiotic statements from our announcers. The first was Byron Saxton describing Tozawa’s TWO WINS in the Interim Cruiserweight Title tournament as a “career resurgence.” The second was Tom Phillips not understanding why Zelina’s crew are arguing. It seems pretty obvious to me that it’s because Zelina blamed the other two for Almas’ loss to Apollo Crews on Raw two weeks ago.
Not only did Tozawa lose cleanly again, but now he lost to a guy who wasn’t even paying full attention to the match because he was yelling at his own stablemate.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Drew McIntyre came out. He Claymored Theory and the other two laughed. Then he did the same to Garza. Then he and Andrade got into a shoving match, and the announcers tried to get me interested in a match between those two… which maybe I might have been if they hadn’t done this match just a month ago, with Drew kicking Andrade’s ass with little trouble. This was just them filing time with sh*t I’ve seen what feels like a million times in the past six weeks.

DREW MCINTYRE vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS (w/Zelina Vega)- 4.75/10
Garza and Theory seem to have disappeared during the commercial break. Either that or one Claymore has laid them each out for what will certainly wind up being in excess of ten minutes. This was yet another win for Drew in a match where Andrade worked over his arm but the match didn’t go long enough to make Andrade feel like a real threat.

DREW MCINTYRE PROMO- didn’t like it
First he puts Seth over for giving him a good fight last night. Then he starts talking about the “Brand to Brand Invitation.” I have no idea what that is. My guess from context is that Raw has invited someone from SD to come to the show next week and let that person pick his or her opponent. Said opponent is apparently Drew, and said SD wrestler is apparently Baron Corbin.
So the f*cking WILDCARD RULE is back?
I’ll wait until things actually start going wrong to rant about this, but suffice it to say I’m not optimistic that this will be used in a manner that doesn’t make the show feel more phony and make the differences between the two shows feel non-existent. Just as an example of where I think problems will come from, note how there is no authority figure to make this big announcement and they don’t even have the announcers do it, but rather they have Drew do it, springing this on us with no context at all.

Also...you want some cross over between the shows to give you more options and theoretically boost ratings… and your solution is MORE CORBIN? Are you f*cking kidding me?

MVP TRIES TO RECRUIT BOBBY LASHLEY- Hmm… this seems like a pairing that could work. I wonder where they got this idea from?
He also walked past Lana and… either tried to seduce her or maybe said that he wanted to f*ck Lashley or something? I don’t know. Lana yelled angrily at him as he left.

A MOMENT OF BLISS- bad
Alexa Bliss! and Nikki Cross were quickly interrupted by the IIconics. My TV had connection problems, which was a good thing, because it meant I didn’t have to see Nikki looking like a goof trying to do the IIconics’ poses. Nikki said that the tag titles were her and Alexa’s babies. They wanted a title shot. Alexa and Nikki said no so the IIconics demanded a non-title match. Neither team came off like babyfaces here. This resulted in…

THE IICONICS vs. ALEXA BLISS! & NIKKI CROSS- 3/10
We were told the IIconics had been “away from WWE for seven months” but were never told where they had been. The champs did a clean job in five minutes. Once again, either team came off like the babyfaces.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS REY MYSTERIO JR.- this was… good?
Rey feels “great” after being thrown off of a roof. It turns out it was only a six-foot drop. They’re doing a much better job at explaining this and making it work than I thought they would. Rollins showed up and… holy f*ck they actually acknowledged that Seth is the father. Rey told him that “being a father truly changes your life,” so that’s even more fuel to the fire for the Seth Rollins babyface turn. It’s a nice story, but there is definitely going to be a vacuum in the top heel spot on Raw (especially if Orton is off feuding with Edge). Who do we have left? They can definitely push Lashley, but that’s about it, now that Zelina’s whole crew have been beaten into the ground time after time.

R-TRUTH PROMO- Now he’s making crazy faces and has a split personality. Please keep him off my TV.

R-TRUTH, CEDRIC ALEXANDER, & RICOCHET vs. MVP, SHANE THORNE, & BRENDAN VINK- 4/10
Byron is pretending to see R-Truth’s invisible friend or alternate personality or whatever. Stuff happened. Goofball Truth pinned MVP after spitting out some dentures or something like that.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Lashley came out and beat up Truth, which makes him a babyface in my book. MVP also got some shots in, and MVP and Lashley walked off together.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS JINDER MAHAL- decent
Someone actually explained why he/she was off TV for so long (Jinder was having knee surgery)! Jinder says that he is going to “redeem” himself, just like Drew, and have a “hero’s journey” to the top.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS SHAYNA BASZLER- SHAYNA IS THE BEST HEEL EVER!
“How stupid do you have to be to get knocked up when you’re the champion? Ten out of ten mothers will try to convince you that pregnancy didn’t ruin their careers. Are you trying to tell me that Becky Lynch becomes the longest-reining Raw Women’s Champion of all time, and throws that all away just to house some miserable parasite? Imagine… ‘The Man’… barefoot, fat, on the couch eating Bon-Bons. Yeah. That kid’s gonna suck. You know who the father is? I rest my case.”

AJ STYLES THROWS POPCORN AT THE UNDERTAKER DOCUMENTARY THAT THEY’RE SO PROUD OF- Can we please keep this shoot documentary out of kayfabe?


BECKY LYNCH HUGS VINCE MCMAHON- pointless pathos. Is Vince involved in things or not? I guess Becky has gotten over Vince trying to screw her out of a Mania main event for no reason last year.
SETH ROLLINS & BUDDY MURPHY vs. REY MYSTERIO JR. & ALEISTER BLACK- 5/10 as a match, but it was really more of a segment, but a very one difficult to rate.
At least Aleister Black is selling his fall a bit. Rollins was completely despondent over his loss last night and not into the match at all. He wouldn’t even stretch his hand out for a tag. He was almost completely stoic while also being sad. This didn’t come across well at all. It was too over the top and thus came off like “ACTING!” You’d think that someone who spent so much time around Jimmy Jacobs would know how to a better job of this.
This also came across as weird because Seth didn’t act this way either after last night’s match or even during the segment with Rey earlier on this show. It’s possible that the idea was that Shayna’s comments have caused him to go into this funk (or Shayna’s comments in combinations with Rey’s)- which I think is what they’re going for because otherwise why Shayna’s promo directly before this match?- but either way, this still came across was WAY over the top.
Obviously, this was a bit of a weird match due to Seth’s non-participation. Before the finish came, I was actually getting ready to praise WWE for the way they handled this… and a lot of that praise does still apply even with the idiotic finish, so praise them I shall. The story they wanted to tell required a match where the heel Murphy- a natural partner for Seth and someone with theoretical beef with both Aleister (their feud over the winter where Murphy could never win) and Rey (who beat Murphy to qualify for MITB)- would have to wrestle alone. Because the heel would be wrestling alone, they needed to do something to the babyfaces to make them weaker so that we wouldn’t start to feel sympathy for the heel- hence the roof bumps the night before. I LOVE little things like this, where it turns out the guys taking the big bump the night before weren’t chosen at random and that the big bump wasn’t done just to have a big bump to serve a purpose for a storyline. Well done, WWE.
Then came the finish, which involved Seth suddenly snapping and blocking Rey’s attempted 619 on Murphy with a powerbomb to the outside… which inexplicably resulted in a DQ! HOW THE F*CK WAS THAT A DQ?! We see non-legal partners get involved in front of the ref at some point in almost every single tag match in every single company, and it’s almost never a DQ (especially not the first time!). Could you really have not done this same thing but waited a few seconds and had the DQ be for poking Rey in the eye? Or for trying to gouge Rey’s eyes out with the stairs? And if the match is already over then shouldn’t the referee be running over and trying to pull Seth off of Rey when he keeps beating him up? And doubly so when he starts trying to take Rey’s eye out?!
It they hadn’t handled the DQ so stupidly, I think I really would have liked this, but they had to do it in the dumbest possible way. They did a great job with Rey’s eye injury, and showing us Seth’s look as he went up the ramp that started as stoic-angry, then looked slightly sad, and then, finally, serene.

SETH ROLLINS TRIES TO CHECK ON REY IN THE TRAINER’S ROOM- great!
We got to see part of Rey’s face without his mask on while his eye was being checked on. This, more than anything else, did a great job of selling the severity of this whole thing. The moment Rollins and Murphy showed up, Adam Pearce and the doctor grabbed Rey and left, leaving Black, Rollins, and Murphy alone. Seth, looking a lot more normal, told Black “I don’t know what happened out there.” This caused Black to decide to attack Murphy for some reason. Aleister beat Murphy up and officials can in to separate them. Meanwhile, Seth sneaked off in the same direction they took Rey in. Hmm…

2 ON 2 BASKETBALL GAME: Street Profits vs. Viking Raiders- no rating, ATROCIOUS segment
The Viking Raiders don’t understand basketball at all. They got embarrassed and made to look like goofs, including thinking that they won just because they scored their first basket as time expired. To make matters worse, the scoreboard they were using only seemed to be on when we saw it in cutaway shots. When we saw it in the background of the actual action, it was off. That’s WCW-level sh*t right there. Is it that hard to cut around a scoreboard? Or just have the wrestlers announce the score after every basket like people usually do when they play pick-up basketball?
This was boring, stupid, make the Viking Raiders look like idiots, and did nothing for the Street Profits, either. Remember a few weeks ago when the idea of this feud was that the Viking Raiders were this team that the Street Profits had never been able to beat who were now coming for their titles?

NATTIE CONFRONTS SHAYNA BASZLER ABOUT SAYING MEAN THING- bad
Nattie looked like an idiot here. At best, she was an obnoxious busybody. Of course Shayna knows that saying mean things about other people makes her look like a jerk. She just doesn’t care.
Shayna said that Nattie would never have a kid and that the Hart Dynasty would die with her, because apparently the other Hart kids who have been under WWE contract and are even in WWE’s title histories just don’t exist anymore. Either that, or WWE knows something about Harry Smith that we don’t know (as for Teddy… let’s all hope that he doesn’t breed). And, of course, that ignores all of the non-wrestling Hart kids.

Oh. Apparently these two are wrestling next. That makes this confrontation look even more staged. Like one of them said “Oh sh*t, we have a match booked. Let’s shoot an angle to drum up some interest,” like that embarrassing Tito Ortiz/Stephan Bonnar Bellator stunt.

EVEN MORE DUMB SH*T AT THE BASKETBALL COURT- Apparently the Viking Raiders let the Street Profits win, as they are capable of consistently sinking shots from half course. This was idiotic, and clearly created by effects and camera trickery that any middle-schooler knows how to do.

NATALYA vs. SHAYNA BASZLER- 2/10
Another short match. Baszler won via knee strike.

CHARLY CARSUO INTERVIEWS KING CORBIN- bad
He’s here this week, too. Why not just have him cut a promo on SD? Why do we have to get Corbin this week, too?
Anyway, Charly wants to know what Corbin was thinking when he tossed Rey and Aleister off the roof last night. What a dumb question! He was trying to win the match. No one ever asks “what was going through your mind when you shoved that ladder over with WRESTLER X standing on top of it?” Someone could easily break a neck taking a fall like that. But apparently here we’re supposed to think that Corbin crossed some sort of line, I guess? As far as I’m concerned, this is WWE’s fault. If they knew people would be fighting on the roof, they should have put up some sort of security railing.
Corbin’s answer to the question was essentially “it was the heat of the moment during a match” and claiming that he knew the secondary roof was just six feet below. It’s kind of hard to be outraged at him when he’s making logical sense.
Charly asked him about his match with Drew next week. Corbin claimed that all of Drew’s success is due to him… somehow. Hey, Charly? How about asking Corbin a logical question, like something having to due with Elias attacking him during MITB and possibly costing him the match?

EDGE-ORTON CONFRONTATION- didn’t like it.
Edge says that he’s not here to fight, and that WWE’s hype-machine acted without his consent when they advertised that he would be “hunting vipers” or something like that. Orton came out and said that Edge was the better man at WreslteMania. He went to leave, then came back and said that while Edge was the “better man” at WrestleMania, he wasn’t the “better wrestler.” He notes that Edge chose the stip at Mania, and that Edge didn’t have to wrestle a full match the Royal Rumble, so he no wants to have a straight “wrestling match” with Edge at Backlash. I’m not saying that there isn’t a story that can be told with all of this, but going from a no DQs match full of hate to a regular wrestling match with no real hatred is a little weird.
Charly Caruso showed up out of nowhere to ask Edge if he accepted the challenge. He didn’t respond. Charly said that if the match does happen, it might be “the greatest wrestling match ever.” Yeah… that’s setting the bar ridiculously high.
Randy’s promo was good and like I said above, you can definitely tell a story with this, but this whole thing felt very anticlimactic and thus was very disappointing for a main event segment. Any good will I would have had then evaporated when Charly hyped the match the way she did. It was the words of a promotion who do not trust the idea of a straight professional wrestling match to draw, and thus they feel the need to push it with this ridiculous superlative. Edge and Orton are both great, but if you tell me “greatest wrestling match ever,” I’m expecting prime Angle/Benoit/Danielson/Zack Sabre Jr./WALTER/KUSHIDA/Aries/Strong/Gulak/O’Reilly/Eddie Edwards/AJ Styles/Low Ki/Samoa Joe/Munenori Sawa types. I expect a match-up that would make Gabe Sapolsky scream like a tweenage girl at a Justin Bieber concert (do tweenage girls like Justin Bieber?). This feels like a match-up that was the only way Paul Heyman could convince Vince McMahon to allow him to promote something as “straight wrestling match.”


This was a very weird episode of Raw. On the whole, I didn’t enjoy it, though there were several things I would have liked a lot better with small tweaks, and what appeared to be slight changes in the way they do things that I did find promising. That being said, there wasn’t any good wrestling, and there wasn’t any good follow-up from last night’s PPV, either, so they haven’t done anything to make me want to tune in next week, so I can’t see how I can call this anything other than a bad show.