BRM Reviews the 2/10/2014 Raw

[Big Red Machine]

BETTY WHITE & BIG SHOW- I was worried that a PG Betty White wouldn't be very fun, but the fact that she said the word ass eliminates that particular worry.

HUNTER & STEPH SEGMENT- Hunter starts to talk, but Orton interrupts him. Steph points out how stupid of an idea that was. Orton says he is out here to apologize to Steph and Hunter. Steph and Hunter talk Dragon up as a possible new "face of the WWE," but Randy seems concerned about Batista. Then Dragon comes out... and Steph says that she is sick and tired of people interrupting her and Hunter when they are cutting their promos, so from now on, anyone who wants to speak with them must make an appointment through Kane. I thought that was awesome.
Dragon wants a match with Kane, but can't have one because Kane is on "administrative leave" for attacking Dragon last week. Stephanie assures us that Kane has "a very strongly worded letter of reprimand in his performance appraisal file." More awesome!

Dragon wonders who is doing Hunter & Steph performance appraisal, and he says they are a combination of "arrogance and stupidity"... and ORTON immediately leaps in and tells Dragon that he ends to show Hunter and Steph some respect! Hypocritical heels sucking up to the authority figures. CLASSIC!
Hunter decides that the best thing for business tonight would be to give Daniel Bryan "a well-deserved night off." Dragon and the crowd chant "NO!" but the Hunter and Steph do not budge.

THE WYATT FAMILY vs. REY MYSTERIO JR. CODY RHODES, & GOLDUST- 6.5/10
Cole and Lawler kept talking about how “the rule book would be thrown out of the window” and stuff like that for the Shield vs. Wyatts match at Elimination Chamber. When did that become a No DQ’s match.

Lawler: It reminds me of when I used to herd sheep
Cole: How many sheep did you have?
Lawler: I don’t know. Every time I used to try to count them, I’d doze off.
LOVE IT!

BRAY WYATT PROMO- Bray’s certinaly done better in the past, but I really liked his comments that the Shield are fighting “a war not meant for you” and that his “next game” would soon begin.
One thing that had been bugging me is that not only have we not gotten a reason for why the Wyatt’s attacked Cena, but Bray hasn’t even mentioned it. Interfering in a world title match is a big deal. Not the sort of thing that should be ignored. This promo seemed to say “don’t worry. We haven’t forgotten about it. Bray just got forced into a detour with The Shield first.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS THE SHIELD- apparently Ambrose hasn’t been defending his title because there is a lot of paperwork required in doing so. That doesn’t do anything to explain why the Authoirty hasn’t booked one. Anyway, Ambrose says he will make an open challenge for the title tonight… so it really can’t be THAT much paperwork. They tease that Reigns might accept the challenge.

THE DIVAS BACKSTAGE WITH BETTY WHITE- stand guest host plugging their project. Then the New Age Outlaws show up to protect Betty from young people playing pranks on her. This will either be horribly unfunny or completely hilarious. There cannot possibly be any middle ground.

SANTINO MARELLA (w/Emma)- vs. FANDANGO (w/Summer Rae)-
They had Emma do Santino’s power walk. FAIL! FAIL! FAIL! I want my Emma Dance!
The match goes just long enough for Miz to show up and whine that he wasn’t been booked. Emma’s presence was totally irrelevant.

BYRON SAXTON INTERVIEWS SHEAMUS- Good promo by Sheamus.

CHRISTIAN PROMO- okay. He has a nasty cut under his eye.

SHEAMUS & CHRISTIAN vs. THE REAL AMERICANS (w/Zeb Coulter)- 7.25/10
Cesaro got the chance to cut a promo before the match and actually got a pretty big pop.
These four put on a giant slugfest, and it was great! Cesaro looked like a star, going toe-to-toe with Sheamus. Swagger eats another pin, too, which means that we will hopefully get a split between these two and a then a big push for Cesaro.

JOHN CENA PROMO-good. He basically put a bunch of the never generation of guys over.

DOLPH ZIGGLER vs. ALBERTO DEL RIO- 3/10
Wow. Ziggler didn’t even make it to the ring before they started playing Del Rio’s music, and the match was criminally short. I guess the show is running late… which makes me wonder why they just wasted thirty seconds showing us those clips of Batista from their YouTube channel.
AFTERMATH- very bad.
Del Rio put Ziggler in the cross armbreaker after the match, but Batista came out to make the save. A little advice for you, Dave: Next time you come out to make a save… RUN! You are preventing an immoral act and saving a man from serious injury! Don’t f*cking dawdle your way out and then just causally jog down the ramp!
So Dave gets into the ring and COMPLETEY DESTROYS DEL RIO! He speared him, beat him up, ramped him into the steel steps and the barricade, then powerbomed him through the announce table. Combined with Dave’s lack of urgency in his save, this seemed more like Batista just wanted to beat Del Rio than actually cared about saving Ziggler, and even if he did, this seemed like a HUGE overreaction (to me, at least). And even if you didn’t think it was an overreaction… they still had Batista COMPLETELY DESTROY Del Rio. Not only does this take away all of Del Rio’s heat, but it also completely killed any desire to see these gys wrestle because we all now know that Batista will just destroy Del Rio.

HUNTER & BATISTA BACKSTAGE- stupid.
Hunter says that he can’t have Batista running around destroying people because “this is a publically traded company now.” It was a publically traded company the whole time Batista was in the company before, too!
Hunter then books the match that they just killed all interest in. This is apparently what Batista wanted, but Batista still acts like he is upset, despite getting what he wanted.

LITA WILL GO INTO THE HALL OF FAME- well deserved.

BETTY WHITE & THE NEW AGE OUTLAWS DRINKING TEA BACKSTAGE- stupid. If they wanted to roofie Betty so they could prank her, why did they warn her that someone was trying to prank her in that earlier segment?

CURTIS AXEL & RYBACK vs. THE USOS- 4/10
The New Age Outlaws are on commentary. I assume that the only reason this match is happening is to pay off whatever so-called comedy they are attempting with the Outlaws.
Well I’ll be damned. They also used it to push an angle to lead to a tag title match between NAO and the Usos. Road Dogg says that there is all sorts of paperwork to do in order to sign a title shot and you can’t just go around giving people title shots. So, of course, the next segment was…

DEAN AMRBOSE MAKES AN OPEN CHALLENGE FOR THE US TITLE IN A MATCH HE JUST DECIDED TO MAKE A FEW HOURS AGO- it is accepted by MARK HENRY

WWE UNITED STATES TITLE MATCH: Dean Ambrose(c) (w/The Shield) vs. Mark Henry- 4/10
Mark is about to win, but Rollins causes a DQ. Then the Wyatts show up. They stare at each other for a long time and tease a fight, but the Wyatts walk away.

ALICIA FOX, AKSANA, & AJ LEE (w/Tamina) vs. THE BELLA TWINS & CAMERON (w/Eva Marie)- 3/10
Someone came up with a finisher for Cameron, so WWE decided that they needed to show it off.

RUSEV & LANA PROMO- okay… let’s have this actually go somewhere, please.

KANE PROMO- Did they say in the opening segment that Kane wasn’t here? Anyway, he starts to talk, but Dragon comes out and gets revenge on him.

RANDY ORTON vs. JOHN CENA- 8.25/10
The crowd was into the match, but there were also some strong “Daniel Bryan!” chants going at one point. This was very much what their match at Royal Rumble 2014 should have been.
So… one guy was chanting “SAME OLD SH*T!” when Orton set up for his DDT, after hitting the DDT from the top rope instead of the middle rope, Orton just went off on the guy, and managed to just stop himself short of saying “sh*t” on the air.
So, because Orton had said that the Viper was back earlier… he decided to bring back the stupidest part of that nickname… the Viper Dance.

Overall, a good Raw, aside from the Batista stuff.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Michael Cole “Cody Rhodes and Goldust have fallen on hard times since losing the tag team titles.”
Really? “Hard times?” Come on! They have lost, like, two matches. Three at most. Is that really “hard times?”

[cero2k]

really couldn't get into the show, it was so boring and i'm really getting tired of the scheduled authority show intro.

only thing that i was about to like was the shield/wyatt thing, but then i hated that it was always Reigns the one taking the first step