BRM Reviews the 9/28/2020 Raw (Wrestle-Crap Angle at the End!)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 9/28/2020 Raw (Wrestle-Crap Angle at the End!)

Post by Big Red Machine » Sep 30th, '20, 01:03

OPENING SEGMENT- snore
All of the people who screwed the heel out of a match he was fairly winning (and also Ric Flair) showed up and hung out with the champion, who made sure to tell us that he didn’t know they would be there. Orton showed up on the TitanTron and said that this wasn’t over. He talked about Drew not knowing what “hell” feels like, and wouldn’t you know it, the next PPV just happens to be Hell in a Cell.
The way WWE booked this program is as follows:
1. Build up a match between two top guys for the world title with a story of who can hit their deadly finisher first.
2. Do the match and have neither guy hit their finisher and have the babyface win clean with a roll-up setting up an eventually rematch.
(So far, so good)
3. Do a repetitive series of angles where both guys have to hit the other multiple times with their supposedly deadly finishers to keep the others down, both killing the value of said finishers and also booking in a painfully repetitive manner for an entire month, and teasing “career-threatening” injuries that both guys are back from in a matter of weeks, and kill the value of wins and losses by having someone get a title shot even though he hasn’t actually beaten anyone since losing his previous title shot.
4. Do a big gimmick match ambulance match for the title in which the babyface needs three different interferences to make sure he doesn’t lose.
5. Have the heel rightfully point out that he was screwed and then book a Hell in a Cell match as the (probable) blow-off.

A GOOD booker, on the other hand, would have done it like this:
3. Set up a different challenger for the champion in September and make sure that the champion retains after the first time he hits his deadly finisher. Meanwhile, you rebuild the challenger by giving him a series of wins where he wins after the first time he hits his finisher every time.
4. Now that the challenger has been rebuilt, book a title match with regular rules where this time one of them hits his finisher but the other kicks out, and then hits his own finisher and wins, paying off the story you started telling months ago.
5. You don’t need a step five because your story is over and there is thus no reason to go back to the match.

Oh, also Drew is making an open challenge for his title tonight. We would later learn that WWE decided to make it not so open by saying that you could only qualify if you hadn’t yet challenged Drew for the title.

ASUKA INTERRUPTS KAYLA BRAXTON’S INTERVIEW WITH ZELINA VEGA- bad
Zelina starts cutting a dull promo. Asuka shows up and laughs at her a bunch, acting nothing like someone who extended a hand of respect to this woman only to be assaulted for it a mere twenty-four hours ago. Zelina got angry and they had a completely forced pull-apart.

WWE RAW WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Asuka(c) vs. Zelina Vega- 6/10
Zelina lost clean last night, but apparently kicking the champion in the stomach is enough to earn you another title shot.
Again, this was good for the time it got, but I had been given very little reason to think the outcome would be different from last night. Asuka held the Asuka Lock in for a little longer than necessary. You could probably go somewhere from here with Zelina getting angrier and looking for revenge, but unless Zelina really escalates it, that still doesn’t give us any reason to think that things will be different.

Flair, Christian, HBK, and Big Show were shown playing cards backstage. I don’t know how anyone could possibly care about this. We already saw these guys do their thing.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
After a commercial, Zelina is being escorted up the ramp by referees while Andrade is in the ring, telling her what a loser she is. He also said that Garza was weak. His English was… well… a perfect example of why breaking him and Zelina up was such a bad idea.
Andrade then made an open challenge (yes, two on one show), resulting in…

ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS vs. KEITH LEE- 2.5/10
This was excellent for a match that went less than three minutes. The problem is that this went less than three minutes, and Andrade has been treated so poorly that Lee beating him clean in three minutes doesn’t make Lee look good so much as it just makes the newly-single Andrade seem like a jobber.

THE HURT BUSINESS CHASE OFF SOME DORK FOR SITTING IN LASHLEY’S SEAT AND THEN STEAL HIS FOOD- Look… I’m not going to tell you that they weren’t being mean, but this looked fancy enough that it’s entirely possible that this was some fancy buffet restaurant and not catering, in which case this guy was being f*cking weird by taking his plate and sitting down with strangers.

DUMB 24/7 TITLE SH*T- Tozawa was not really eaten by a shark. He rolled R-Truth up because Truth is dumb. There was a Pulp Fiction joke with the glowing briefcase. Tozawa’s ninja servant then turned on is because it was Drew Gulak, which is about the 500th time that has happened. Gulak got to cu a promos aying that he was always prepared, just so Truth could hit him with the briefcase right away and make him look like an idiot for the second night in a row. This was utter sh*t.
Truth, Tozawa and Gulak have been booked in a three-way title match for later tonight. Why do we even have title matches for this belt if guys are trading it back and forth without their being a match, and the moment the match ends, the guy who got pinned can just get up and go after the champion again?

SETH ROLLINS COMES UPON BUDDY MURPHY FUTZING AROUND ON HIS PHONE BACKSTAGE-
Why are these two still together? Are they the new Sasha and Bayley? Seth asks Murphy why he’s in his gear when he doesn’t have a match. Has Seth not been to a wrestling show before?
Seth tells Murphy to get put on that suit that Seth got him, because they have to go out and celebrate. Dude… you have to be at work THREE HOURS A WEEK. You have 165 other hours in the week in which to go celebrate your misdeeds. WWE should not be tolerating this bullsh*t.
Anyway, Murphy goes to get change, and, like an idiot, he leaves his phone behind. Seth then steals Murphy’s phone. I assume that when Murphy gets his phone back, all of contacts will have been changed to “Wesley Blake” and his lock-screen image will have been changed to a picture of a TNN executive f*cking a pig (I am ashamed of myself for letting the twentieth anniversary of that promo go by without marking it in some way).

KING’S COURT WITH THE MYSTERIO FAMILY- boring
Lawler has four guests plus himself, but only two seats?
Dominik says this feud has gone on for far too long. I’ll say.
Dominik vows to put an end to it the next time he sees Seth. Rey says they’re a strong family and Seth is bad. Aalyah says that Murphy came up to her last week and she doesn’t know what to think about him, but she says that anyone who hangs out with Seth Rollins should reevaluate their life choices.
Seth appears on the TitanTron, and I immediately want to shut my TV off. He says that Aalyah isn’t being honest and shows them Murphy’s phone. Those two have been… *GASP!* texting. So what? The conversation was clearly initiated by Murphy (and if it wasn’t then surely Seth would have shown that), and her wishing him a happy birthday is perfectly in line with what she just said, which is that she doesn’t know how she feels about him. “Happy birthday” is not “I love you” or even, “hey do you want to grab a bite to eat?” It’s one of the most mundane things people say to each other. Half of Facebook used to be people from high school or college that you would never otherwise talk to wishing you a happy birthday because Facebook alerted them that it was your birthday.
Seth laughs as if he has accomplished something. Aalyah gets angry and heads to the back, and her parents hobble after her.
Seth starts f*cking around on Murphy’s phone. At that very moment, Murphy comes back and gets Angry at Seth. He grabs Seth by the collar. And at that very moment Dominik attacks both of them. Referees show up to pull him off. I don’t give a sh*t about this and just want them to jump to the next chapter when Seth and Murphy feud while Rey and Dominik go off and do something else. I don’t want to see either of them against either Seth or Murphy ever again.
And just because I said that, when we came back from a commercial, they announced that Dominik would be wrestling Murphy later tonight.

NATTIE & LANA PROMO- bad
They demand that Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler be stripped of the titles and the titles be handed over to them. This was stupid delusional heel sh*t that makes them look like goofs. They’re the female version of Miz & Morrison. Perhaps a little funnier because they’re not trying to be corny on purpose.
Adam Pearce comes out and books them against “the newest members of Raw’s women’s division,” who are Mandy Rose and Dana Brooke. Yes, Dana is now on Raw, too, with no explanation. Meanwhile, we still haven’t found out who Mandy was traded for. And they want us to give a sh*t about their draft in two weeks? Why should we when they show no qualms about switching people from show to show as fits their needs at any given moment?

NATALYA & LANA vs. DANA BROOKE & MANDY ROSE- 1/10
The babyfaces won a short match cleanly, with Mandy pinning Lana after a knee strike.

ALEISTER BLACK PROMO- very good
He turned on Owens because Owens usually turns on others. He also wasn’t happy that Owens was with his family the night Murphy f*cked up Aleister’s eye, and thus was not there for Aleister. Aleister doesn’t like families because his own father was “a cruel man” because G-d forbid you just come right out and say what you’re implying (that his father was abusive).

DUMB SH*T HAPPENS BACKSTAGE- The old farts are playing poker and talking about Drew still. Big Show suggests that he could challenge for the title tonight because he’s the only one who isn’t retired, which shows you how much attention he has been paying to this thing he’s talking about because WWE narrowed it down so that only people who haven’t challenged Drew before are eligible, and Show was Drew’s first challenger.
Then Street Profits showed up to make noise. There was no reason for any of this to be shown to us, and all it did was make Owens look like a goof for having to stand around in the ring waiting while this completely unimportant crap was put on the air.

ALEISTER BLACK vs. KEVIN OWENS- 6.5/10
Aleister has new, sh*ttier music with a terrible intro. They also got rid of his entrance gimmick.
This was a fine brawl but with a frustrating finish which was Black getting DQed for an elbow that hit the referee that was 99% probably an accident. I’m not adverse to doing this finish in a vacuum, but with WWE doing so many DQs (and especially in pointless spots, like the Smackdown Women’s Title match on last night’s PPV), I am giving them almost no leeway for good DQs, either, because they do too damn many of them overall.

THE HURT BUSINESS SHOVE MUSTAFA ALI, LEADING TO A BACKSTAGE CONFRONTATION WITH ALI, RICOCHET, & APOLLO CREWS- They decide to have a match later. This feud won’t ever end, will it?
Both Crews vs. Lashley & MVP and Seth & Murphy vs. Rey & Dominik have been going on since May. It’s now September and everyone is tired of both of them, but the feuds feel like they are nowhere near over.

WWE 24/7 TITLE MATCH: R-Truth(c) vs. Akira Tozawa vs Drew Gulak- 3.5/10
Do they even realize how dumb it is to have a title whose defining gimmick you have to SUSPEND so that people can have a match over it?
This was short but great for the time it got… which makes it even more frustrating that WWE has made it impossible for me to care about these people.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS MANDY ROSE & DANA BROOKE- bad
Why would these two need to be on Raw Talk if you’re interviewing them now?
Charly asks how the team came together. Mandy says that Dana Brooke “has always bee there” for her. I call bullsh*t. Tonight’s match was literally the first time they had ever been on the same team (including house shows)!
They were on opposite brands for years, only winding up in the same place since the draft last fall, where Mandy was a heel and Dana was a babyface up until six months ago, and we NEVER SAW THEM ON SCREEN TOGETHER SINCE MANDY TURNED FACE. You can’t just pull being best friends out of nowhere. I don’t give a sh*t if it’s a shoot. If it doesn’t happen in kayfabe, you can’t use it in your story.
They say they’re coming for the tag titles. Then everyone gets distracted by Dominik warming up.

DOMINIK MYSTERIO vs. BUDDY MURPHY- 6.5/10
This was good until the forced finish, which saw Dominik get a Kendo stick and try to hit Murphy with it but Aalyah come out and beg him not to, leading to Murphy rolling Dominik up. The Aalyah/Murphy thing is just going WAY too quickly. Also, they almost botched the finish, as Murphy had almost rolled off of Dominik when the three-count was made (he was still putting some pressure on him so it wasn’t atrocious, but it definitely didn’t look good).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Dominik canes Murphy anyway. Aalyah tells him to stop because “he’s not like Seth.” Dominik insists that he’s going this to “protect” the family legacy, but I fail to see how caning Muprhy for the 8,204th time does that.
Dominik calls Aalyah “naïve,” so she slaps him and storms off.

DOLPH ZIGGLER LOBBIES ADAM PEARCE FOR A TITLE SHOT- Pearce points out that he is ineligible, but Dolph says he’s talking about someone else, so they decide to go to Pearce’s office and talk.

HURT BUSINESS PROMO- F*CKING AWESOME!
Cedric isn’t here because they “sent him to Hurt Business boot camp” to make sure he doesn’t screw up like he did last week. Holy crap, and explanation for why someone isn’t here!
The rest of this was just a tremendous promo on the babyfaces. Absolutely tremendous. MVP is right up with their Tazz in terms of promo quality this year, and has been easily the best thing on the entire WWE main roster in 2020.

MVP THROWS HIS WATER BOTTLE ON THE FLOOR AND ORDERS A JANITOR TO CLEAN IT UP- You know… I think WWE might want us to boo the Hurt Business. They’re being subtle about it, but I’m pretty sure that’s what they want.

MUSTAFA ALI, APOLLO CREWS, & RICOCHET vs. THE HURT BUSINESS (Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, & MVP)- 5/10
The babyfacces jumped the bell on the heels, but the heels had the advantage within moments. Retribution took over the Thunderdome screens and f*cked with the lights. Of course, this happened right before a commercial break. When we came back, the Thunderdome was back under WWE’s control and Retribution had not shown up.
The match was fine. Ali pinned MVP clean with a 450.

THE OLD FARTS PLAY POKER- Flair wins. Why are we supposed to care?

BIANCA BELAIR WINS A BUNCH OF RACES- Is she going to field ground balls like Mr. Perfect next week? That’s what this feels like.

RETRIBUTION VIDEO PACKAGE- no new information

WWE WORLD HEAVYWWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Drew McIntyre(c) vs. Bobby Roode (w/Dolph Ziggler)- 7/10
Oh look. Our challenger is… a guy who has been portrayed as a midcarder at best on the main roster so far. And there isn’t enough time left in the show for him to have a match that feels like it will elevate him any hire than that without winning the belt. Since when are he and Dolph even friends?
Drew dominated until a distraction by Ziggler let him clip Drew’s knee and start working it over. Drew sold very well. Drew came back and got the win.

SHOW-CLOSING ANGLE- SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO F*CKING GOOFY!

We cut backstage to the janitor from before, who has been hiding a steel chair with his janitoring materials. He sneaks up to the “Legends Lounge” and removes his disguise to reveal Randy Orton. Why even have the disguise if you’re not going to lull your enemies into a false sense of security. It’s not like Randy Orton would arouse any suspicion if he were seen strolling around backstage at a show he’s supposed to be on!
Then Randy put on NIGHT VISION GOGGLES. Not over his eyes, of course. That would be silly. He put him on his forehead, barged into the room. Paused to ensure that his targets could see him coming, then made a show of putting the goggles down over his eyes and turning off the lights. Dude… put the goggles on, then turn the lights off as you come in the door! It’s not that hard!
With the lights off, all we see is pitch black while we hear noises of a chair being smashed into things. No cries of pain or anything. It’s not people do that when hitting hit with a chair. Then, Randy turns the lights back on, and it appears that he hasn’t even moved from the spot he was in when he first turned them off, and the camera pans around the room to show us the destruction. This was WrestleCrap-level hokiness.
The worst part about this is that they think they were being clever. They think that having him a scene early on but not calling attention to it makes this clever, but in reality it does the opposite. Why would Randy be dressed as a janitor and actually cleaning the floors HALF AN HOUR BEFORE HIS ASSAULT, IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT PART OF THE BUILDING? And why disguise yourself as a janitor- where obscuring your face would be suspicious, instead of putting on a Lucha mask or disguising yourself as one of Tozawa’s ninjas.
And now Randy is putting his disguise back on and escaping , as if he doesn’t know that what he has just done will somehow magically wind up being broadcast on Raw.
Also, anyone who was defending last night’s interference in the ambulance match was Randy getting his comeuppance at the end of the story should be apologizing to the rest of us right now, as Randy just got that same heat right back.

This was another very bad episode of Raw, with a main event angle so bad that it must be seen to be believed. The lack of anything from Retribution as well as the complete and total lack of Raw Underground other than a quick passing recap of the non-Raw Underground appearance of Shane McMahon and Dabba-Kato on the KO Show last week, has me thinking (read as: hoping) that they are taking some time to rethink these things and won’t bring them back until there is a real plan in place. Of course, this is WWE, so the odds are that these new plans will probably suck, too.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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