BRM Reviews the 8/17/2015 Raw

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- Hunter and Steph plug Summer Slam and pimp the Network. Sorry guys. This was my fault for bringing up how much they have pulled back on the “$9.99” schtik.
Hunter and Steph basically acted as a crappy video-package to run down some of the matches. Now they’ve got the Summer Slam graphics up, but the graphics are showing Cena vs. Rollins while Steph is still talking about Brock vs. Taker.
Stephanie McMahon said that Rollins “challenged John Cena- face to mangled face- to a contract signing.” Yes. “challenged” him to a contract signing. She actually said that! Apparently Cena has bravely accepted to meet Seth later tonight so that they can both sign a piece of paper.
They keep referring to Harper as Bray’s “prodigal son,” which really comes off like they are throwing a phrase around with no knowledge of what it means.
Big audio problems now, too.
Steph announces Sasha Banks vs. Nikki Bella, and she is such a big supporter of these NXT girls that she mispronounces the name of their title (it’s “Women’s Championship,” not “Woman’s Championship”- yes, it’s a nitpick, this segment already has me really annoyed).
Apparently Jon Stewart will guest-host SummerSlam. Fine. Whatever. What I want to know is what was the point of setting this up as if Hunter didn’t know this was happening, even though Steph said it was announced on the website earlier today.

So basically Hunter and Steph just wasted eight minutes doing a video package could have done in two or three.

RANDY ORTON & CESARO vs. KEVIN OWENS & SHEAMUS- 7/10
Great match, but kind of a weird finish. I also don’t see what the point of Orton pinning Sheamus here was. Why have the babyface get his revenge right before the PPV. I think it would have been better for Owens to beat one of the babyfaces by some manner of cheating.

TOTAL DIVAS COMMERCIAL- so just how big is the disconnect between the WWE on-screen reality and Total Divas? This commercial started with the following words:
“Eva Marie: She’s always been loved by the fans.”
Yes, really. That’s running an ad in the 80’s talking about how Hogan and Piper have always been the best of friends. I just don’t understand how they could possibly think running a commercial like that would make anyone who watches Raw think there is any value in watching Total Divas.

UNDERTAKER PROMO- would have been a Promo of the Year Candidate in 1988.

ROLLINS TALKS TO THE AUTHORITY- Rollins asks them if they’ll build a statue for him in WWE Headquarters if he wins. They say yes (although they said he would get it if he wins both titles… so we’re definitely getting a non-decisive finish at the PPV).

ROMAN REIGNS (w/Dean Ambrose) vs. LUKE HARPER (w/Bray Wyatt)- 6.5/10
Ambrose, Roman’s second, got his own entrance. Why couldn’t he have just come through the crowd with Roman?
Someone apparently found the “sit down Byron!” chants from last week funny because this week they booked things so as force him to stand, even though there was an unused chair like three feet away from him.
Ambrose appears to be too dense to understand that the Wyatts are a metaphorical family the same way that he and Roman are. This very much annoyed me. Overall, Dean was rather annoying on commentary. It wasn’t anything in particular that he said. It was more his incessant talking.
The match wasn’t bad or anything, but I just feel like I’ve seen everything this feud has to give me a million times over. This is a likely a consequence of the fact that Roman, Harper, and Bray tend to put on the same match every time (and Dean to a lesser extent), but then that really just means that it’s WWE’s fault for overexposing the match with so many damn pointless matches over the past few weeks.

TAMINA (w/Sasha Banks & Naomi) vs. BECKY LYNCH (w/Charlotte & Paige)- 4/10
In case calling it a “Divas Revolution” wasn’t subtle enough for you, they had to spell it out in the most annoying way possible: the announcers taking well-rehearsed turns reading paragraphs from what I’m sure was a press release whipped up by the PR department. You’d think someone in that department would have told them that the delivery of the message can be just as important as the content in getting the message through, but with the way they’ve handled the Network, at this point I’m not surprised.
I was really hoping that Tamina would jump Becky from behind when she was doing her hair-twirling thing, just to make this match feel different from every other WWE women’s match I’ve seen in the past five weeks.
And just to make things feel more the same, there’s the obligatory shot of the Team Bella watching backstage, lest we somehow forget this is a three-team feud, which is inconceivable with the announcers talking about it the entire time.
All of the announcers’ talk about how “some people give Paige credit for starting this revolution” because of her “one woman stand” absolutely infuriated me and reminded me what has made this so hard for me to enjoy.
The match was short, but they did the best they could with the time they had.
I hate how Cole has to tell us that “this is called the Disarmer” every time Becky locks the move in. It’s obviously a submission. Don’t explain the name to us. Just call it that! And he only does it for this one move, too.

MARK HENRY vs. RUSEV (w/Summer Rae)- 1/10
Why do they insist on using MARK HENRY as a jobber?
Well… at least Lana put over that the Accolade hurt her. Lana came off like a jealous ex-girlfriend here by insisting that Rusev and Summer aren’t truly happy together, despite mounds of evidence to the contrary.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Lana calls out Summer Rae. Summer obliges. Lana slaps Summer once, and Summer just goes down. Lana asks for Rusev… then calls Dolph in to fight her battle for her. The execution here was terrible. Lana came across like a heel manager setting a trap. Why not just have Lana cut a promo, have Rusev and Summer come out to menace her and then have Dolph make the save? That would have been much better, saved time, and also saved Mark Henry from having to be squashed AGAIN for NO REASON.
As if this couldn’t get any worse, by the time the segment was over, both babyfaces had laid out both heels just days before the PPV (where Wikipedia tells me they are having a match).

DOLPH & LANA PROMO- Dolph now challenges Rusev to a match at Summer Slam. He also called Rusev a “Bulgarian bonehead.”

RYBACK vs. THE MIZ- 2/10
Big Show is on commentary because every match must have a guest commentator, otherwise it will be impossible for us to understand who is feuding with who. And these f*ckers have the nerve to call themselves “Creative.”
Miz cut a good promo before a short match.

CENA-ROLLINS CONTRACT SIGNING- too long.
Rollins was pretty good, but the whole first half of Cena’s promo felt very weird.
Ah. So they finally bring up the fact that a Cena victory would tie Flair. That should be a whole epic story in and of itself. If they waste it here, it will be a HUGE mistake.

NEW DAY PROMO- decent.

LUCHA DRAGONS & THE PRIME TIME PLAYERS vs. LOS MATADORES & THE NEW DAY (w/Xavier Woods & El Torito)- no rating, eh segment.
I guess they got over the idea that they wanted to in the match, but I found the whole thing to be a waste of time.

Okay… these f*cking morons need to drop this “comic book” idea with Neville right away. It’s just annoying.

WADE BARRETT & STARDUST PROMO- Dear Lord this was terrible.
ATTENTION WADE BARRETT: I will give you FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS if, the next time there is a promo set-up like this, you shoot Bullhammer Cody hard enough to give him amnesia so that he will forget he ever wanted to do this atrocious character.

SASHA BANKS (w/Naomi & Tamina) vs. NIKKI BELLA (w/Alicia Fox & Brie Bella)- 4.75/10
Yup. There’s PCB watching backstage. Naomi came across like such a dork chanting “B!A!D!” on the outside.
WOW! That springboard kick looked UGLY. There were one or two other spots in here that looked pretty bad as well.
Loud “WE WANT LESNAR!” chants. And even “JBL!” chants.
Sasha gets the dirty win even though it makes a lot more sense to put her over cleanly and it makes a lot more sense for BAD to be the tweeners and the Bellas to be the heels.

RENEE INTERVIEWS PCB- bad… and you’ve got to love the logic here: In NXT the women got over because they were allowed to be themselves and there was real creative focus on both the storylines and the individual characters... so WWE brings them up and takes all of that away from them and treats them with the same formula that they have spent the past few years getting a grand total ZERO women over with… somehow WWE thinks they’ll get over just like they did on NXT.
Youre chicken recipe tastes great. Mine tastes like sh*t. I think I’ll try making your recipe instead of mine, but I’ll replace all of the spices you use with the ones I use. THESE PEOPLE ARE SOOOOOO F*CKING STUPID IT’S A WONDER THEY CAN EVEN DRESS THEMSELVES IN THE MORNING!

BROCK LESNAR HOMECOMING- the people go TOTALLY F*CKING BONKERS for Brock. Heyman was totally awesome as well. Taker showed up, kicked Brock in the testicles, then chokeslammed him and tombstoned him. This might have been the first time in about thirteen years that I’ve heard Taker get booed. It’s very weird.

A decent show from WWE. There was some good wrestling, but also a lot of stuff that I hated. It did its job as a go-home show well, though.

[Serujuunin]

I read this before I watched RAW and thought that I would be with you on the whole Lana/Ziggler/Rusev thing, but the truth is... I've wanted to do something much like that to my exes so I can't blame her!