BRM Reviews the 8/6/2019 (bad, but lease there was some stuff worth seeing on it)

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

BRM Reviews the 8/6/2019 (bad, but lease there was some stuff worth seeing on it)

Post by Big Red Machine » Aug 6th, '19, 21:58

SAMOA JOE PROMO- AWESOME
He not only denies tipping over a forklift full of boxes onto Roman Reigns, but he’s angry that people are accusing him of doing it. He ordered Michael Cole to play the footage so that he could exonerate himself. In what will almost certainly be my favorite line in any WWE promo all year, Joe mocked WWE’s camera angles by saying “we had more cameras than a dystopian state up there.” Joe also noted none of those cameras showed him anywhere near the situation. Joe tells us that Roman Reigns is complicit in the smearing of his good name by not telling people that Joe is innocent, and so when Roman Reigns shows up tonight, Joe is going to go down to the ring and hist the show hostage until Roman gives him the apology that he deserves.

At this point they decided it was a good idea to play Becky Lynch’s music and send her out for her match. Interrupting Joe like his and him not being able to do anything about it did nothing for Becky and simply made Joe look bad. Could we really not have just had Joe go to the back and then have Becky come out after a quick video package or something? Like maybe a video package recapping how Becky vs. Nattie became a submission match?

Cole plugs a contract signing for the Miz vs. Ziggler match at SummerSlam, and tells us that HBK will be there as well. Oh goody. Another talking segment from these guys.

Renee Young informs us that “after weeks of avoiding the top competitors, the WWE women’s tag Tteam division, the IIconics put their titles on the line in a fatal four-way elimination match tonight.” Well what makes tonight any different any other week over past four months. These two have been losing non-title match or beating hand-picked jobbers or just not being on TV for MONTHS, and we haven’t had any explanation for why they never had to defend their titles against people who clearly deserved title shots against them. Why are all of these teams suddenly getting their shots at the same time tonight?
This might seem like a ridiculous question to ask, but I think it’s an important one. Renee’s phrasing puts the blame on the heels for “ducking” their challengers, but all we’ve seen is one segment where they faked an illness to get out of a match. WWE wants us to be angry at the heels, but the story they’ve told doesn’t back that up at all. They haven’t told any sort of story at all. And when you don’t have the wrestlers as active agents in their own stories, the story by default becomes that management has simply booked them into these matches- or, in this case, that management has not being booking these clearly deserved title matches. Until now, when they decided to do so with no explanation of why they are getting around to doing it now. This makes the answer by default “they just didn’t get around to it,” and if the people whose job it is to book the shows took FOUR MONTHS to getting around to booking the various worthy challengers into a title match, then how important can these titles really be?


Anyway, with absolutely no build, we’re getting…

CHARLOTTE FLAIR & BECKY LYNCH vs. TRISH STRATUS & NATALYA- 6/10 for the wrestling, but a -5/10 to Creative for this.
Yes. They threw Trish Stratus in a match on Raw, with no build. Putting Trish in the match and having it end in a DQ without her ever getting in the ring was complete and total bullsh*t. All you had to do in order to build Trish vs. Charlotte up was have Trish cut a promo tonight. Charlotte’s not even supposed to be on Raw, so she doesn’t need to show up. She can respond to Trish’s promo on tomorrow on Smackdown, and you’re good to go. Or if you decided for some reason that you needed violence before the match, have Charlotte jump Trish from behind and lay her out while Trish is cutting her promo tonight, and tomorrow night have Charlotte cut a promo bragging about it and show a promo of Trish from the hospital vowing to get revenge this Sunday at SummerSlam.
Nattie wrestled the whole match herself, which made her the babyface. Eventually Becky tagged herself in hard, so Charlotte attacked her from behind and then walked off. THIs came off like classic “we don’t want to beat anyone and we don’t have a good way out of this team that we forced together for no reason” booking. Then Nattie, the babyface, locked Becky in her finishing submission and refused to break when Becky got to the ropes, which not only resulted in an annoying DQ, but was also a complete and total heel move. To cement her heelishness, they had Trish come in and pull Nattie off of Becky, to which Nattie responded by shoving the returning legend down and storyline off. This company has decided to go babyface vs. babyface in BOTH women’s title matches for their third-biggest show of the year, and has managed to make all four babyfaces completely unlikable in the process of building to these matches. Astounding.
Almost as bad as the booking for this match was the commentary. Corey Graves talked up Nattie’s training at the Dungeon as something that will surely give her an edge in Sunday’s submission match because it means that “Natalya’s got various submissions the likes of which we’ve never even seen before.”
1. If she had these rare submissions, why hasn’t she pulled them out to try to win matches at point in the past thirteen years?
2. It’s not just Nattie. All of these Harts have come through that Dungeon, and the only submission they ever use as a finish is the G-d damn Sharpshooter. Why does Graves think there is some other secret Dungeon-only move that none of them have ever used before?
3. Considering that Nattie needed to go to Fit Finlay last week to learn defense for a f*cking seated Fujiwara armbar, I’m betting the classes at the Dungeon weren’t that in depth.
Then, about two seconds later, Nattie locked in a regular “cross armbreaker” style armbar, and f*cking Corey Graves says “I wonder if this is something Natalya picked up from all the time she spent with Ronda Rousey.” So Graves (and Renee, who parroted all of Graves’ idiocy) thinks that Nattie mastered even the most archaic of submissions at the Dungeon, but didn’t know how to do a f*cking armbar until Ronda Rousey came along? Do these people ever think before they speak?
Oh. And in between these two things, when Nattie locked in the armbar, Cole said that Nattie was “using Becky’s own move against her.” Sure, they’re both variation on the armbar, but Drew McIntyre’s Claymore Kick, Shawn Michaels’ Sweet Chin Music, and Rey Mysterio Jr.’s 619 are all kicks to the head, but Cole has never treated any of them as if they were the same move.

We saw Becky limping out of the ring, which caused me to have the following thought. Becky was limping here at least as badly as she was after the Royal Rumble, and yet no one has raised any concerns that she might not be able to make it to the big title match in six days because she’s too injured, even though they did raise this concern after the Royal Rumble when the big title match was over two months away. One could theorize that this is actually evidence that the McMahons didn’t want Becky in the Mania match bit now that it’s not Mania they don’t care. But one shouldn’t give them any credit for that because I’ll bet you that they don’t even remember that they did that awful bit with Becky needing to go to the doctor and being suspended over it.

I usually try not to just insult random fans in the audience, but there is someone in the fourth row with a sign that says “WolfPac Elite” and the W in WolfPac is the WWE logo. I hereby dub this fan the biggest poser in history.

REY MYSTERIO JR. vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS (w/Zelina Vega)- 7.75/10
Two weeks before SummerSlam they did an angle where Andrade tore Rey’s mask off. Naturally they use this to set up a big match at the PPV, right? Of course not. They do a match on Raw instead. The heel won, and there will be no follow-up on the PPV.
Corey Graves told us that “Andrade realizes what another landmark victory over Rey Mysterio would do for his career.” Yeah. Considering that you had to refer to it as “another landmark victory over Rey Mysterio,” I’m pretty sure Andrade has realized by now that beating Rey won’t mean squat because this company will never make it mean anything. When Andrade won this match, Graves called it “massive,” “landmark” and “monumental” within a span of four words.
The match was GREAT and told a great story with Rey chasing the 619, only for Vega’s interference to prevent him from capitalizing on it when he finally hit it, and while I enjoyed it, I just don’t’ buy that it will be relevant in any way, and with all of the experience I have with WWE at this point, Graves’ comments do nothing but reinforce this to me, as they come across like a company compensating for their lack of “show” with an overabundance of “tell.”

They’re advertising Drew McIntyre vs. Cedric Alexander with Kurt Angle as the special guest referee because putting all of these Attitude Era-2000s stars on TV popped a rating a few weeks ago, so they’re apparently trying to do that again tonight instead of actually fixing the problems that are making people not care about the stars of today.

24/7 TITLE BULLSH*T- STUPID

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS BECKY LYNCH- AWESOME!

SARAH SCHREIBER INTERVIEWS NATALYA- fine
Nattie’s promo was decent, but I was not fond of the part where she vowed to end Becky’s career. I just don’t buy that this has become an “I’m going to end your career” feud in three weeks.

UNIVERSAL TITLE BUILD SEGMENT- terrible
Heyman and Brock came out and Heyman cut a promo about how Brock kicked Rollins’ ass last week. Rollins limped down to the ring and tried to attack Brock with a chair but Brock kicked his ass yet again. This made Rollins look SOOOOOO bad. It’s also about the fifteenth time they’ve done this same angle with these guys, and I’m well past sick of it.

Rollins cut a lame promo afterwards refusing to be stretchered out. He said he would “guarantee” a victory over Brock at the PPV. Sure, Seth. Whatever.

THE STREET PROFITS AND KURT ANGLE F*CK AROUND BACKSTAGE- dumb

THE VIKING RAIDERS vs. TWO JOBBERS- DUD on principle
These guys were called up the night after WrestleMania. It’s now the go-hone show for SummerSlam. They should not still be squashing jobbers with no direction.

SINGLES MATCH WITH KURT ANGLE AS SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE: Drew McIntyre vs. Cedric Alexander- no rating, bad segment
Drew jumps Cedric before the match. Cedric made a comeback with a big tornado DDT on the floor. Then the lights went off and Bray Wyatt magicked himself into the ring to attack Kurt Angle. This builds up to Bray’s match at SummerSlam against Finn Balor because… um… uh… because it shows that Bray Wyatt is dangerous, and also because having Bray do something other than use his magical powers to distract someone or teleport into the ring to attack someone (you know, like explain to us why he has targeted Finn Balor) would require putting some actual thought into this.

THE NEW DAY (Big E. & Xavier Woods) vs. THE OC (Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson) (w/AJ Styles)- DUD!

A quick DQ for no reason, just so Ricochet could come out and make the save and turn it into a six-man tag, but I’m not going to do that, because I’d actually like them to deliver on the entirety of the advertised non-jobber match more than once in the first two hours of the show.

THE OC vs. RICOCHET & THE NEW DAY (Xavier Woods & Big E.)- 4/10
The OC win a disappointingly short match (about 5:00), with Woods getting pinned to keep things even-Steven. Why are the tag champs trading wins with each other’s factions instead of developing their own feuds?

Roman Reigns has finally showed up to work. He’s two hours later, but I guess he technically isn’t late because he’s a Smackdown wrestler and thus isn’t actually obligated to be here. On a related note, we’ve seen Charlotte, Andrade/Vega, New Day, and the already-booked Kabuki Warriors and Fire & Desire, making Roman Reigns the SIXTH Smackdown wrestler on this show, and thus WWE is once again violating the wildcard rule.

SAMOA JOE AND ROMAN REIGNS SEGMENT- bad
Joe comes out and declares that he is now holding the show up until Roman Reigns comes out to apologize him. Shouldn’t someone be trying to stop him? Like security? Or the wrestlers whose match was booked for right now whose time is being stolen?
Joe sat around until a “CM PUNK!” chant started. He said he was going to go beat Roman up in the parking lot. Michael Cole tells us “we’ll try to dispatch cameras out there to see what happens.” I was about to go into a rant on how you can’t play this game on a show where we get dashboard cams (or, more recently, the forklift POV shot and the big wide-shot of Roman, with Kayla in profile from Smackdown), but when I thought about it, I couldn’t remember a single instance on tonight’s show with the “just pretend they’re not their” cameras, so I’ll give WWE a pass on this and just naively hope tonight is the beginning of a change in presentation.
We eventually got a camera right before Joe as he matched to the parking lot. I laughed at Joe calling Roman “Uce.” Roman got out of his car to confront Joe, but had to dive back in it for safety as someone in a gray sedan slammed into the side of Roman’s car at medium speed. Eddie Gilbert is dead, which leaves our prime suspects as Doug Gilbert, Billy Kidman, and Rikishi. WWE history takes primacy in WWE, so I’m going to go with Rikishi. He did it for the Usos (because he is upset that Roman has become a much bigger star than his own sons). That’s my theory at the moment.
After the commercial they showed us footage of the attacking car speeding away, and Joe checking on Roman and calling for a medic. We also saw Hunter show up to check on Roman. Roman appeared to be once again mostly unharmed by this attempted murder.
Wait… attempted murder? That reminds me! This could be Braun Strowman out for revenge for Roman trying to murder him two years ago.
Wait. Never mind. If it was Braun he’d have just pushed the boxes over, not used a forklift. Also, Braun would never fit in a car that small.

Why didn’t the camera man go run over and try to see who was driving the car? Or at least try to get a license plate number?


FATAL FOUR-WAY ELIMINATION MATCH FOR THE WWE WOMEN’S TAG TEAM TITLES: The IIconics(c) vs. Alexa Bliss! & Nikki Cross vs. Fire & Desire vs. Kabuki Warriors (w/Paige)- 6/10
I had thought that after last week we were done with the dreaded “no wrestling during commercials” BS, but here we went to a break after the IIconics were eliminated, and when we returned from the break we got a bell to start the next fall off. Sonya and Asuka had a pretty good segment together. Kairi got tagged in for some double-team moves but Sonya eventually managed to tag in Alexa. Kairi then acted like a total dick heel to Alexa, even though she’s supposed to be a babyface and Alexa is probably supposed to be a heel.
Asuka made Mandy tap to the Asuka Lock, at which point we took another commercial break… but this time there was no break between the falls. They had a good final segment, but I think this match would have been a lot better if it wasn’t an elimination match. Alexa and Nikki won cleanly, so the Kabuki Warriors are basically dead. I do feel there is a story to tell with Nikki and Bliss as champions with Nikki essentially turning Alexa babyface, but the Kabuki Warriors probably need to break up and start feuding, or maybe just state wrestling singles matches against a newly heel champion Ember Moon.
Oh. Right. This match gets the +10 modifier for Alexa Bliss! Winning a title, making its official rating now 16/10. Let’s see any of that G1 crap score higher than that!

DOLPH ZIGGLER VS. THE MIZ CONTRACT SIGNING FEATURING SHAWN MICHAELS- bad
They cut promos. Basically, the babyface had to trick the heel into facing someone else the night before he faces him. Miz vs. Dolph will now take place on Raw, and Dolph will face Goldberg at SummerSlam. I don’t want to see that match one bit, and would much rather than they just saved the fifteen minutes that this will go between entrances, exits, a video package and the match.

Yet another bad episode of Raw, with frustrating booking all up and down the card. But at least we got a great Rey vs. Andrade match and Alexa won a title.
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

User avatar
Bob-O
Posts: 3390
Joined: Dec 17th, '10, 06:06

Re: BRM Reviews the 8/5/2019 (bad, but lease there was some stuff worth seeing on it)

Post by Bob-O » Aug 7th, '19, 10:45

Big Red Machine wrote: Aug 6th, '19, 21:58 UNIVERSAL TITLE BUILD SEGMENT- terrible
Heyman and Brock came out and Heyman cut a promo about how Brock kicked Rollins’ ass last week. Rollins limped down to the ring and tried to attack Brock with a chair but Brock kicked his ass yet again. This made Rollins look SOOOOOO bad. It’s also about the fifteenth time they’ve done this same angle with these guys, and I’m well past sick of it.
Makes me wonder what's going to happen at the PPV though. With Brock's booking over the year's, every match has zero intrigue except "is he gonna lose tonight?" and I already know that answer could change at any given moment. I've enjoyed watching Seth get the shit kicked out of him, but that doesn't say much for the outcome of the PPV. If Brock wins, we don't have a title on TV anymore, if Seth wins we get a guy that's been on everyone's last nerve lately... and now exposed as completely beatable... on TV every week as Champion. I just want to get it over with.
Big Red Machine wrote: Aug 6th, '19, 21:58 DOLPH ZIGGLER VS. THE MIZ CONTRACT SIGNING FEATURING SHAWN MICHAELS- bad
They cut promos. Basically, the babyface had to trick the heel into facing someone else the night before he faces him. Miz vs. Dolph will now take place on Raw, and Dolph will face Goldberg at SummerSlam. I don’t want to see that match one bit, and would much rather than they just saved the fifteen minutes that this will go between entrances, exits, a video package and the match.
lol "and the match"... how long does a spear and a jackhammer take? I believe your estimate at 15 minutes for the whole schabang is accurate though. I'd love to see an actual list, but my gut says the longest entrances (excluding Wrestlemania 3) in wrestling history would go something like:
1. Undertaker
2. Goldberg
3. Goldust
Image

User avatar
KILLdozer
Posts: 5930
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 22:54

Re: BRM Reviews the 8/5/2019 (bad, but lease there was some stuff worth seeing on it)

Post by KILLdozer » Aug 7th, '19, 12:08

As much as I hate to say it...this WAS the right move for the women's tag titles. Simply because as ridiculous as it is...NO ONE else but the new champions had nor have any kind of story going on...so this is the best route to get the belts the most exposure and spotlight, as well as booking and storyline opportunity.
When they come, they'll come at what you love.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 19 guests