BRM Gives Up on the 6/28/2021 Raw (I'm done with Raw until fans come back)

Post Reply
User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

BRM Gives Up on the 6/28/2021 Raw (I'm done with Raw until fans come back)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 29th, '21, 21:13

ADAM PEARCE & SONYA DEVILLE MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT- Randy Orton isn’t here tonight, so they’re having a battle royale to fill his spot in the MITB qualifier later. Fine.
But seriously, LEARN TO HOLD THE F*CKING CAMERA STILL!

MATT RIDDLE SHOWS UP AND EMBARASSES HIMSELF BY BEING A WHINY, PATHETIC, LYING IDIOT- terrible
Riddle shows up with a poorly-written note that he claims is from Orton, saying that Riddle should be given his spot in the battle royale. It’s obvious that Riddle wrote this, which makes him both an idiot (for thinking that this would work) and a heel (for lying to try to have something handed to him instead of wrestling a match and earning it).
Pearce and Sonya call him on it, so Riddle confesses, but then begins to whine that it’s not fair that Randy should have his spot taken away from him simply because he can’t be here at the assigned time (and that’s being nice. If we actually believe Riddle’s claim that Randy missed his flight because he stayed up playing video games all night and then overslept, Riddle is saying that Randy should not be punished for being irresponsible). This would be bad in a normal situation, but tonight’s match for people who already had a chance to qualify for MITB and lost, and are being given a second chance out of the kindness of management’s heart. To claim that anyone “deserves” a spot like this makes Riddle look even more whiny.
Riddle then said that he felt bac that Randy supposedly lost because of him last week, so he offers to compete on Randy’s behalf tonight. Pearce and Sonya agreed. This did make Riddle likable, but he would have come across even more likable for doing this if they had CUT OUT THE PART WHERE HE CAME ACROSS LIKE A F*CKING MORON AND A LIAR!

BATTLE ROYALE FOR A SPOT IN THE MITB QUALIFIER LATER TONIGHT- 5/10
Garza survived by hopping on the floor on one foot. This served NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER and resulted in the rules feeling like a joke. Garza did not need to be almost eliminated and then do this to sneak up behind Mansoor to set up for a spot where Mustafa Ali saved Mansoor. After saving Mansoor, Ali immediately turned on him. Why did you save him, then? Why not just let Garza eliminate him and then eliminate Garza?
Tozawa got eliminated, and then the previously-eliminated Gulak rolled him up to win the 24/7 Title, because that’s still a thing, apparently. Gulak immediately got hit by one of R-Truth’s old finishers (I think he called it the “Flying Jalapeno” or something like that) and then got pinned. Then Truth got pinned by Tozawa after a dive.
Omos came out and pulled Erik and Ivar out of the ring over the top rope, eliminating them. He then beat them up, including throwing Ivar (or maybe it’s Erik. I don’t remember who is who anymore) into the LED board so hard that someone in the production truck decided to shut it off.
Cedric got to eliminate Jeff Hardy, and not on a fluke, either. He countered a Twist of Fate and threw Jeff out. That felt big for him.
The final two were Matt Riddle and Damian Priest. They had a very good mini-match, but the story going in made the winner obvious, to the point where I was just waiting for Riddle to eliminate Priest so we could move on with the show.
Riddle asked that Orton’s music be played after the match. He went to do Orton’s pose, but got startled by the pyro. That was a little bit funny.

SHAYNA BASZLER, NIA JAX, & REGINALD BACKSTAGE- bad
Shayna tried REALLY hard to make the dumb lines they gave her sound natural.
Alexa Bliss was shown watching them from behind because… um… because WWE production loves that dumb sh*t. That’s the only explanation. She’s got magical powers. She doesn’t need to snoop on them to find out what they’re saying.

KEVIN PATRICK INTERVIEWS AJ STYLES & OMOS- meh
AJ complains that Randy is being given a chance through Riddle instead of being punished for being irresponsible. He said that because of Riddle being in the MITB qualifier, his chances of winning “drastically went down.” That was enough to get me to laugh out loud. That Scott Steiner promo will never not be hilarious.
Kevin Patrick asks Omos about eliminating the Viking Raiders from the battle royale. Omos says he was only scouting the competition for AJ. They played a clip from last week of the Viking Raiders attacking Omos, thus distracting AJ and leading to his loss. AJ accused Kevin Patrick of being a hypocrite. What that’s not completely accurate, AJ does have a point that the Viking Raiders attacked Omos for what as far as I can tell is no good reason (he slapped a turkey leg out of your hand? Grow up!) and no one seems to have had a bad word to say about it, but if Omos attacks the Viking Raiders, he has done something wrong.

LUCHA HOUSE PARTY COME OUT OF THEIR CAVE TO TELL NIKKI CROSS THAT THEY LIKE HER MASK- Yes, really. They haven’t been seen on Raw in weeks (they weren’t even important enough to get a spot in the battle royale earlier), but they see someone else wearing a mask, so they have to go tell her they like it. Because they wear masks, too, you see, and all masked people have to be in segments with each other, even if the masks they are wearing are completely different styles and serve completely different purposes.

SARAH SCHREIBER INTERVIEWS NIKKI CROSS- bad
I’ve heard a lot of WWE announcers and interviewers say a lot of ridiculous things, but the Sarah Schreiber’s claim that fans have been “excited” by Nikki’s mask might well be the most ridiculous. Nikki tells us that we all have a superhero inside of us and we can all do better if we embrace that mindset. F*ck off. This is a professional combat sport! No one tunes in to be inspired. We tune in to watch compelling characters kicks each other’s asses!

“ALMOST A SUPERHERO” NIKKI CROSS vs. SHAYNA BASZLER (w/Nia Jax & Reginald)- 2/10
Alexa Bliss came out to distract the heels, allowing Nikki to dive onto them, and, of course, the confluence of both a dive and someone coming out to watch the match forced them to go to a commercial so fast that no one even had the chance to tell us that Raw was rolling on.
Alexa took out Nia and Reginald with one kick each. The kick to Reginald was to the balls, but Nia doesn’t have that excuse. This made her look extremely weak, and it gained NOTHING. Nikki won with a roll-up, but the moment Alexa came out, she became the focus of the attention, so Nikki’s win (and the whole match) felt irrelevant.

KOFI KINGSTON & MVP CUT PROMOS ON EACH OTHER- bad
Their graphic claimed that Kofi was the “first African born WWE Champion,” which is false. He’s the first African-born WWE Champion, but if you don’t include the hyphen it means that Kofi was born as the champion. Do they really not have anyone in their graphics department who knows how English works?
Byron Saxton said that Kofi “could erase from his mind” the way he was forced to stand there, helpless, while his best friend was brutalized. Meanwhile, Kofi was doing his usual entrance, happily skipping to the ring.
Now that his entrance (and a commercial break) is over, Kofi is serious Kofi now. He says that Woods “came out there to have my back” last week. How, exactly? You didn’t need any help. You and Lashley were just talking. Woods inserted himself into things and demanded a match with Lashley. Kofi says that Woods proved his abilities last week. How, exactly? He lost cleanly to a man who was wrestling his second Hell in a Cell match in twenty-four hours, when Woods hadn’t wrestled in weeks. Kofi demands that people start respecting Woods, but as far as being a singles competitor goes, I’m not going to do that because he barely ever even beats midcarders clean, so stop pretending he’s anything better than “meh.”
Kofi vows to make Lashley pay by taking his title. MVP comes out with Lashley’s Ladies and finds the idea ridiculous. MVP cut a good promo talking about how Lashley (who is “on vacation” this week) will destroy Kofi. Kofi responded by claiming that Lashley has gotten “soft.” He notes that Drew would have been the champion if MVP hadn’t interfered at the PPV. That’s a good point. Unfortunately, it’s not really a productive one, as it makes me think that Drew is the rightful champion, and thus it’s Drew that I want to see win the title, not Kofi.
Kofi’s other evidence that Lashley has gone soft is the Woods point that I debunked earlier, and the fact that Kofi himself beat Lashley, which Kofi is once again conveniently forgetting to mention required both a distraction from Woods and interference by Drew. So when MVP interferes on Lashley’s behalf, it’s a sign that Lashley is weak, but two people interfering on Kofi’s behalf is not a sign that Kofi is weak? What a hypocrite! I can’t wait to see Bobby Lashley teach this asshole a lesson at Money in the Bank!
Kofi criticized Lashley for taking some days off. Kofi says that when he was champion, he flew to Ghana and showed the belt to little African children to show them that anything was possible they believed in themselves, then flew back and did TV in the US.
Look… that’s really awesome that Kofi did that, I don’t doubt for a second that that was an extremely meaningful moment for both Kofi and the children. But that is not a key part of a champion’s job. Why can’t Lashley take a vacation day if he cleared it with management? That’s none of Kofi’s business, and there is nothing wrong with it. It’s one week off! It’s not like he’s Brock Lesnar and not around for months at a time!
Kofi says that MVP is distracting Lashley with women and fancy clothes and so forth, and that this will result in Lashley taking his eye off the ball. I’m not saying that it can’t happen, but we’ve seen absolutely no evidence of it so far (an inability to beat Drew cleanly doesn’t count because we had no evidence he could beat Drew before, either). Kofi feels like he’s living in some sort of fantasy world here.
They got into an argument about whether or not MVP was actually hurt. Kofi charged at MVP. MVP tried to swing his cane at Kofi but Kofi ducked at hit him with Trouble in Paradise. Being able to swing the cane does not mean that MVP isn’t hurt (or at least isn’t medically cleared, which is what MVP said), so until I get told otherwise, I am left to assume that Kofi has now attacked an injured man.

KEVIN PATRICK INTERVIEWS EVA MARIE & DOUDROP- good
Eva blamed last week’s loss on Doudrop making a “rookie mistake,” and said that because of that, she has asked for a rematch tonight. Doudrop pretended to agree with Eva but then rolled her eyes every time Eva’s back was turned.

EVA MARIE & DOUDROP vs. NAOMI & ASUKA- 3/10, but perfect for what it was
Doudrop ran wild until she Asuka forced a double-down. Doudrop crawled over for the tag, but Eva Marei decided to give Doudrop a taste of her own medicine, hopping off the apron… except that unlike Evan, Doudrop kicked out of the roll-up, ran wild on their opponents, and PINNED ASUKA!
Eva was angry about this, so she grabbed the mic and declared herself to be the winner. Doudrop was unhappy, but seemed to decide it wasn’t worth the fight.

SARAH SCHREIBER INTERVIEWS JOHN MORRISON & THE MIZ- so bad I shut the show off
They were clowns. Miz bragged about how “nothing escapes my perception,” only for Ricochet to now be holding the microphone and Sarah Schreiber to have disappeared. I guess we’re supposed to laugh at The Miz for not noticing this change happening right next to him, but if that’s the case then we should be laughing at the cameraperson, too, who also didn’t notice this switch because he or she just stayed zoomed in on the Miz, even as another wrestler approached them and took the microphone from the interviewer. Has this person never shot a wrestling show before?
Anyway, Ricochet took Morrison’s squirt gun off of Morrison’s person. Morrison is an idiot and thinks Ricochet has his own squirt gun. He squirted Morrison in the face, then threatened to squirt Miz, Miz begged off and put his hands up like this was an actual gun. Ricochet squirted Miz with water. I cannot possibly imagine how anyone would think that acting this way makes Ricochet likable.
This was so infuriatingly pointless and stupid (not to mention boring) that I almost shut the show off.
Then I saw that the next match was Ricochet vs. Morrison, and I became enraged. It’s been a while since a wrestling show made me angry enough to punch a wall, and while I didn’t quite get there with is, I was as close as I have been in a long time. They had the choice between giving John Morrison and Ricochet five extra minutes to wrestle, or doing that idiot segment that no one above age eight would find funny and which made everyone involved either look like a moron or an asshole… and they chose the latter. Unless something REALLY big happens, I’m done with this show until fans come back.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 28 guests