BRM Reviews the 11/23/2020 Raw

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 11/23/2020 Raw

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 25th, '20, 15:35

OPENING SEGMENT- fine
We open with Adam Pearce in the ring with Team Raw (and AJ’s large friend). He said that their win deserves some kind of reward, and thus one of them might be the next person to challenge Drew McIntyre for the WWE World Heavyweight Title... and to find out which one it will be, he has booked them in a five-way #1 contendership match tonight!
JUST KIDDING! He’s going to give them all a chance to “state their case.” Because that’s how we solve the question of “who is the most worthy challenger” on Raw; not with a wrestling match, but with a verbal debate.
Predictably, the wrestlers bicker, but at least this time they are bickering over something worthwhile. Shockingly, this was actually not annoying. Braun got offended by Pearce introducing him as “last, but not least,” which makes look like a total nutjob. As Pearce pointed out, “it’s a common phrase” and even if Braun hadn’t heard it before, in order to get offended, he would have had to stop listening partway through the sentence. Braun grabbed Pearce by the collar, yelled at him, and knocked him down with a big headbutt.
The Braun stuff was completely forced, but aside from that, this was a WWE opening segment with a bunch of wrestlers cutting promos on each other that managed to not go a long time and not be annoying, so that’s definitely a win.

When we came back from the commercial, Bryon Saxton declared Braun headbutting Pearce to be “one of the most heinous actions I’ve ever seen- we’ve seen here in recent memory.” Dude… I can think of at least twenty things that I would rank as more heinous than that, just in the past few years. Hell… I think Bayley and Sasha have each tried to cripple each other at least twice in the past three months alone. Or how about Sheamus hitting Elias with a f*cking car and then trying to frame Jeff Hardy for doing it while under the influence? Or Seth Rollins trying to take people’s eyes out! Or Randy Orton trying to cripple people, including old man Ric Flair for no reason. Tone it the f*ck down, dude! Even Tom Phillips was looking at Byron with look of “dude? Why are you overreacting?” on his face.

THE HURT BUSINESS BOTHER THE NEW DAY EARLIER TODAY- meh
The Hurt Business want a title match because New Day embarrassed Raw by losing to the Street Profits last night. New Day rightfully pointed out that they just beat the Hurt Business clean last week. I think this was probably the first time that the Hurt Business came off like they were demanding more than they have earned… which is probably good thing if you want them to be heels. Xavier let himself get goaded into a title shot, which isn’t great (especially if they’re going to lose), but even worse than that was that this came right after Kofi said they wouldn’t defend their titles because it’s their “day off.”
1. I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t show up to work on my days off.
2. While “we don’t want to wrestle because it’s our day off” is a perfectly reasonable statement, it so completely goes against everything WWE has told us about what it means to be a babyface over the past fifteen years that even saying it made Kofi come off really bad.
3. Also, Kofi, if you’re not in your gear and you’re not working out, why is your shirt off? Kind of douchy, bro.

WWE RAW TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The New Day(c) vs. the Hurt Business (w/MVP)- 4.75/10
Remember that secret rule that lead to DQ in a Seth & Murphy vs Rey & ? match earlier this year? Well, it’s back… but this time it happened behind the referee’s back and the announcers pointed out to us that what he had just seen was illegal and would have been a DQ, so they’re doing it right this time. After this spot (Cedric yanking Kofi off the top rope and down to the floor) the match ended in a double-count-out when Shelton was a split-second let getting Kofi back into the ring. The Hurt Business celebrated like they had won, which made them look stupid, and Kofi and Xavier slinked up the ramp, shouting about how the referee should give them their titles, coming off like total heels.
On its own, this would have been terrible, but trying to use THIS to start a feud after New Day beat Shelton & Cedric cleanly last week? Do they not even plan from week to week? If you knew you were going to do this this week, why did you even have last week’s match? And even if the finish here was supposed to be Hurt Business winning by count-out instead of a double DQ and they screwed it up, it’s still a terrible way to start a feud after last week’s result.
On my G-d it’s getting worse! MVP grabs a mic and gives the babyfaces “we can’t let this match end like this!” and asks for the match to be restarted. New Day- the babyfaces- HESITATE, and need MVP to goad them into restarting the match by calling them cowards.
The announcers tried to say that Kofi became injured by Cedric’s interference so New Day are completely justified in not wanting the match to continue, and I don’t disagree with that. The problem is that that is not what New Day were portraying on their way up the ramp.
Kofi’s knee is now injured, and that’s what gets worked over. We eventually get a hot tag to Woods, who ran wild, was very briefly cut off so that Kofi could make one dramatic save, then countered a powerbomb into a sunset flip to win. So even after 1) goading New Day into a match they didn’t have much time to prepare for on a show they weren’t planning to wrestle on, 2) cheating to get an unfair advantage because it resulted in 3) one of their opponents being injured… the Hurt Business STILL LOST.
If you’re going to have them lose, don’t do this bullsh*t in the middle and just give us a nice, long wrestling match! And don’t tell me that they needed to do it because Hurt Business will use the original finish as an excuse to demand a rematch, because they’ve still lost to New Day twice now, so if wanted to give them a tag title match next week or on the PPV or whatever, there were about six different ways you could have done it better than this dumb crap!

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS ADAM PEARCE- meh
Pearce assures us that Braun will face repercussions for his actions. He says if it were up to him, he’d be fired and never brought back. I’m fine with taking this tone, but if you’re doing it, you need to be consistent with it across all instances. Putting your hands on an official can’t be the most heinous thing ever only for this one storyline. Compare this reaction to when Nia Jax put her hands on Pat Buck back in the spring: Did Nia wind up getting suspended? Absolutely. But no one was screaming bloody murder, saying it was the worst thing anyone had ever done, and calling for her to be fired and never brough back.
Charly moves on to asking Pearce what announcement he was about to make before Braun attacked him. Did I miss something? Why is everyone assuming that he was about to make announcement if Braun hadn’t stated his case yet?
Before Pearce can speak, Bobby Lashley interrupts him and says they should talk. Are we really settling this with oral arguments? If Pearce wanted to name a new #1 contenders tonight, shouldn’t he have examined everyone’s recent records and performances to determine who to give the title shot to? And if he couldn’t decide, shouldn’t it be decided by a wrestling match? Isn’t that the whole point of pro wrestling?
After a commercial break, Charly tries to interview Pearce again… and this time he’s interrupted by Orton. Copy and paste my previous paragraph.

LANA INTERIVEW- terrible
She’s so happy that she won via fluke. What a f*cking loser.

CHARLY CARUSO TRIES TO INTERVIEW ADAM PEARCE FOR A THIRD TIME- He finally came up with a f*cking mini-tournament. Qualifiers this week, followed by a #1 contendership match next week. And the first qualifier starts right now. I guess it’s lucky he was able to talk with Orton, come up with his idea, and then get a hold of both competitors in the two and a half minutes since we saw him last.
I was so annoyed by this whole situation that I almost missed Pearce calling Drew McIntyre "Drew McInfart" by accident.

#1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH QUALIFIER: Matt Riddle vs. Sheamus- 8.5/10
Well… that was unexpectedly awesome.

ASUKA & LANA BACKSTAGE- bad
Lana doesn’t want a title shot because Asuka is too good. That’s pretty much what Lana said. Asuka misinterpreted this as Lana wanting a title shot and said their match would be tonight, because Asuka has booking power, apparently.

FIREFLY OUTHOUSE- bad
There is a frog that likes Friendship now. Alexa and Bray don’t like friendship, so they beat it up. Also, Alexa is wrestling Nikki Cross tonight.

WWE RAW WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Asuka(c) vs. Lana- no rating, dull segment
Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler came out to do commentary, so you knew exactly how this match was going to end. On the bright side, they didn’t take long in getting there, but it also would have been nice to see Asuka not act like a child and respond to a taunt by dumping water on people. Asuka wins by DQ. Lana pulls Asuka out of Nia’s grasp when Nia wants to put her through the announcers’ able. The babyfaces go to leave but the heels want a tag match so we get one.
Look… if you wanted to book the tag match, there were a million better ways to do it than what they did tonight, which wasted time with a bunch of segments, made Lana look like a coward and dork, and made Asuka look like an idiot. Why not just have the two heels be bullying Lana and have Asuka come out and make the save? That way you only need one segment to set this up rather than three, no one had to look bad, and you don’t have to bother people with yet another DQ in a title match?

ASUKA & LANA vs. NIA JAX & SHAYNA BASZLER-2/10
The announcers are pushing how Jax & Baszler “ruined what could have been a tremendous moment” for Lana, and I’m not saying that that isn’t true (well… theoretically, anyway. I don’t think Lana has a snowball’s chance in hell of taking the belt from Asuka, now or ever), but if the announcers know that this was unjust then surely management does, too, and they’ll just give her another title shot, right? There is no need to be so damn overdramatic.
We got a long heat on Lana before Asuka got the hot tag. Jax pulled Lana off the apron and went to put her through the announcers’ table but she escaped. Baszler distracted herself trying to choke Lana out, allowing Asuka to roll her up for the pin, so once again we’ve got the women’s tag champs feuding with one of the singles champions instead of doing anything to build up this division.

MATT RIDDLE PITCHES HIS STONER BUSINESS IDEAS TO MVP- entertaining
They seem to be building up Lashley vs. Riddle, so I assume neither of them are getting the title shot.

#1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH QUALIFIER: Keith Lee vs. Bobby Lashley (w/MVP)- 6.5/10
This was turning into a very good hoss fight when MVP just ran in for the DQ, right in front of the referee.

SARAH SCHREIBER INTERVIEWS NIKKI CROSS- great!
Nikki Cross is done trying to help Alexa by being nice. Now she’s going to “beat The Fiend out of her.”

ALEXA BLISS! vs. NIKKI CROSS- no rating, bad segment
Alexa is completely childlike and doesn’t seem to understand they’re in a fight. Nikki kicks her ass until she breaks down crying, but it was all a ruse and she hits Nikki with a move and wins. This is all stupid. I have no interest in where any of it is going, since nothing that has ever happened with The Fiend has actually gone anywhere.

#1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH QUALIFIER: Randy Orton vs. AJ Styles (w/his large, nameless friend)- 7/10
Seriously… it’s been well over a month and this dude still doesn’t have a name. These two started off having what looked like a great match with AJ working the knee, but then The Fiend showed up. He scared Orton, but Orton overcame it and had AJ beat, but then The Fiend came back to help AJ win. Not only did a great match get ruined by a f*ck finish, but they decided to do so in a way where they had to make AJ look like a loser before giving him the win, rather than just protecting Orton.


This was a weird episode of Raw. It was actually pretty enjoyable despite so many of the matches having really obnoxious finishes. Sheamus vs. Riddle was easily the best match on main roster TV in quite a while.
One thing I do have to note: Only ONE of tonight’s matches was booked before the day began, and only two them before the f*cking show began! Can we please pretend that the people in charge of running this company actually do something when the TV shows aren’t on the air?
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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KILLdozer
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Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 22:54

Re: BRM Reviews the 11/23/2020 Raw

Post by KILLdozer » Nov 26th, '20, 15:09

I think that bald dude with AJ Styles is "Olaf", or being called something similar now lol.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

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