BRM Reviews the 2/16/2015 Raw

[Big Red Machine]

You’ll never guess who Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns will team up to face tonight: It’s Big Show and Kane.
Can we please have even a modicum of something that at least resembles creativity? Dragon & Reigns beat the tag champs on Smackdown, so why not give them a title match tonight and have Kane and Big Show interfere for the DQ? The Authority are heels so that explains why Kane and Reigns won’t get a rematch, and you can have the Usos try to help Bryan and Reigns, thus setting up Kane & Show screwing the Usos at Fast Lane so that the Usos can go into WrestleMania as challengers and win the belts back (or, if you don’t want that, so you can set up the Usos beating Kane & Big Show at Mania).

CENA PROMO- he said that the crowd at Fast Lane this Sunday in Memphis would be “rockin.’” This was met with dead silence because the crowd in Orlando doesn’t give a sh*t about the crowd in Memphis.
He also said that Rusev was undefeated. He’s lost a billion times! He is unpinned and unsubmitted, which is still impressive, but there is a big difference between that and being undefeated.
Aside from that, the promo was decent. Rusev and Lana came out and Lana cut a great promo. Rusev then cut an awesome promo. Then they brawled and Cena got super-intense and beat the crap out of Rusev. Great stuff.

DEAN AMBROSE AT A NEWS DESK- dull.
Michael Cole’s lead-in to this was talking about the SNL 40th Anniversary Special last night, and he said that this was like Ambrose auditioning to be the anchor of Weekend Update. Michael Cole has apparently never seen Weekend Update, because Weekend Update is supposed to be funny, and Ambrose didn’t try to crack anything that even resembled a joke here.
This was just a dumb way to tell us that Ambrose would face Harper tonight, that he and Barrett would have a contract signing tonight, all while making Ambrose look like an idiot.

LUKE HARPER vs. DEAN AMBROSE- 6.75/10
Harper is quickly becoming the heel Dolph Zigger: he’ll always put on great matches, but it is quite clear that management sees him as nothing more than an upper-midcarder for life.
Wait… WHAT?! Apparently the deal with the contract signing is that Barrett hasn’t signed it yet… so apparently it has somehow become DEAN’S responsibility to get Barrett to sign it.

KANE & BIG SHOW MEET WITH TRIPLE H- they argue with each other. This is dumb. Also, why are we giving the babyfaces an advantage by booking them against guys who can’t get along?
Wait… did Hunter just say that there are two singles matches instead of a tag team match? Now I’m really confused.

BRAY WYATT PROMO- very good.

GOLDUST & STARDUST BACKSTAGE- good, but also laughter-inducing in a way it probably wasn’t supposed to be
Goldust warns Stardust “this is a place you do not want to go.” That was a good line.
Then Dusty shows up and says he is here to fix things, and Stardust responds by blowing a handful of golden stars that you would use to glue onto an arts and crafts project into the air, and Dusty angrily says “Dammit, Cody, that’s what I’m talking about.”
Dusty gives a speech about family and Stardust agrees to not walk out.

GOLDUST & STARDUST vs. THE NEW DAY (w/Big E.)- 4/10
Booker T mentioned that there was a point where he and his brother did not speak for six years. Michael Cole asked him how it got that bad, and I was really hoping Booker would say that it all started when Stevie Ray turned on him in a wrestling match.
Huh. The Rhodes Brothers had no problems working together whatsoever and still lost clean, which is by far the best outcome because it gives us something different than the standard WWE breakup and because it puts the New Day over. This tells me that Cody and Dustin are probably the ones booking this angle.
Cody does turn on Dustin after the match, though, which was done well.

BRYON SAXTON INTERVIEWS ROMAN REIGNS- GREAT!

DUSTY & CODY BACKSTAGE- HOLY F*CK THIS WAS AWESOME! The weight of having to bear the same name as his “polka-dotted freak” of a father and “embarrassment” of a brother caused Cody Rhodes to SNAP.

KANE vs. ROMAN REIGNS- 5.5/10
Daniel Bryan was on commentary and was great. He decided to lead a “YES!” chant which distracted Roman and allowed Kane to take control of the match.
Dueling chants of “You can’t wrestle!” and “yes he can!” aimed at Roman.
Reigns speared Kane on the outside and won by count-out.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS DANIEL BRYAN- GREAT!

BRAY WYATT PROMO- again?

THE BELLAS HAVE STOLEN PAIGE’S CLOTHES SO THAT SHE CAN’T WRESTLE TONIGHT- um… why? Because no one has never wrestled in not their gear before? Hell… we already saw Luke Harper wrestle in what are basically street clothes, so why can’t Paige do so as well?
Apparently she can’t. Cameron is bitchy to her. Then Paige spots the Rosebuds and kidnaps one of them, and the other Rosebuds just kept on dancing, not giving one singular sh*t between the whole lot of them that one of their number had just been abducted.

SUMMER RAE vs. PAIGE- 3/10, but great for what it was.
The visual of wrestling Paige in one a goofy Exotic Express outfit was totally worth it, and Summer’s reaction was great, too. Paige kicked Summer’s ass.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- the Bellas came out to be mean, but Paige interrupted them and cut an AWESOME promo!

SETH ROLLINS & DOLPH ZIGGLER SEGMENT- great.

DOLPH ZIGGLER vs. SETH ROLLINS (w/Joey Mercury & Jamie Noble)- 7/10
Ziggler had the match won, but the Stoogerweights interfered causing a DQ. Ryback and Rowan ran out to help Ziggler.

TRIPLE H & RIC FLAIR SEGMENT- AWESOME!

DARREN YOUNG & AN UNAMED PARTNER vs. THE ASCENSION-
What the f*ck happened to Darren’s face?! There’s something growing on it!
PTP REUNION! F*CK YES! AND THEY KICKED THE ASCENSION’S ASS! BEST DAY EVER!

MIZ & BARRETT MAKE AN EVIL DEAL BACKSTAGE- just like good heels should!

BAD NEWS BARRETT vs. DAMIEN MIZ-DOW (w/The Miz)- DUD!
An annoying idea that lead to an annoying match.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- dumb.
Ambrose jumps Barrett and zip-ties his hands around the ringpost, then forces him to sign the contract for the title match at Fast Lane. Unfortunately for Dean, as Wade repeatedly noted “THIS ISN’T LEGAL!”

BRAY WYATT PROMO- eh, but at least the end seemed to promise that this would actually progress from Bray just cutting promos.

MIXED TAG TEAM MATCH: Jimmy Uso & Naomi (w/Jey Uso) vs. Tyson Kidd & Natalya (w/Cesaro)- 4/10
First Cole tells us that on Total Divas, Tyson and Nattie were having marital problems bad enough that Nattie was actually sleeping on Naomi and Jimmy’s couch. In his very next sentence, he told us how happy the Usos were that their father Rikishi is going to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. So are we supposed to just forget that on the apparently real Total Divas show, that Rikishi was such a jackass that he TOOK AN INDY BOOKING INSTEAD OF ATTENING JIMMY & NAOMI’S WEDDING?!
The story here was that Tyson would do something to infuriate Jimmy (like slap him in the face) and then immediately tag out to Nattie. The non-kayfabe story is probably that Nattie and Naomi got fed up with the NXT Divas being the only ones who actually got an opportunity to shine in the ring, so they spent their time doing some good old fashioned wrestling which got big pops from the crowd who probably haven’t seen women do these things before.
Nattie got rolled up, so Tyson yelled at her. Because of this, we got the following exchange on commentary.
Booker (disgustedly): He’s blaming his wife.
JBL: It is her fault. She lost the match.
Booker:…

DANIEL BRYAN vs. THE BIG SHOW- 6.5/10
Roman Reigns came out to watch from ringside. Then he tried to distract Daniel Bryan by… signing autographs and giving away free merch. Really. It didn’t work. Bryan did get annoyed when Reigns attacked Big Show, causing him to lose by DQ (because Show speared Reigns although he was actually aiming for Bryan). Reigns and Bryan brawled after the match, which the crowd about 70/30 for Bryan. The brawl was good build for the PPV except that it went on for too long.

A good episode of Raw.

[cero2k]

THE BELLAS HAVE STOLEN PAIGE’S CLOTHES SO THAT SHE CAN’T WRESTLE TONIGHT- um… why? Because no one has never wrestled in not their gear before? Hell… we already saw Luke Harper wrestle in what are basically street clothes, so why can’t Paige do so as well?
Apparently she can’t. Cameron is bitchy to her. Then Paige spots the Rosebuds and kidnaps one of them, and the other Rosebuds just kept on dancing, not giving one singular sh*t between the whole lot of them that one of their number had just been abducted.
it was Leva Bates, she can take care of herself

A good episode of Raw.

i felt some parts failed a bit as a go-home show, aside from the roman/dragon and divas feuds, the rest kinda felt like they're missing more build up. I'm guessing that's what Smackdown will be about

[Big Red Machine]

THE BELLAS HAVE STOLEN PAIGE’S CLOTHES SO THAT SHE CAN’T WRESTLE TONIGHT- um… why? Because no one has never wrestled in not their gear before? Hell… we already saw Luke Harper wrestle in what are basically street clothes, so why can’t Paige do so as well?
Apparently she can’t. Cameron is bitchy to her. Then Paige spots the Rosebuds and kidnaps one of them, and the other Rosebuds just kept on dancing, not giving one singular sh*t between the whole lot of them that one of their number had just been abducted.
it was Leva Bates, she can take care of herself

Oh. I didn't recognize her without her blue pants

A good episode of Raw.

i felt some parts failed a bit as a go-home show, aside from the roman/dragon and divas feuds, the rest kinda felt like they're missing more build up. I'm guessing that's what Smackdown will be about

I think part of that was the lack of match announcements. We don't know what's up with Rollins, Ziggler, Ryback, Cody & Goldust.