BRM Reviews the 12/9/2019 Raw (PROMO OF THE YEAR CANDIDATE!)

[Big Red Machine]

LANA & RUSEV SIGN THEIR DIVORCE PAPERS IN THE RING, WITH JERRY LAWLER PRESIDING-mostly good
They note that for the purposes of signing these papers, Lana has waived the “distance provision” in their restraining order.
Rusev is wearing a t-shirt with a giant Donald Duck face on it underneath his suit. This was the beginning of his excellent trolling of Lana. Both played their roles well, aside from that one line Lana had that sped WAY over the line into horrible overdrama. It was good until they started arguing about who gets the puppy, which got grating very quickly. Rusev leverages signing the divorce papers to get Lana to give him a match against Lashley.
Lashley attacked Rusev the moment he signed the divorce papers. He also said he was going to ask Lana to marry him. Rusev made a comeback and put Lashley through a table. Rusev getting his revenge here makes seeing him beat Lashley in a match feel a lot less important.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS KEVIN OWENS- fine
Owens firmly believes that Rollins is pulling AOP’s strings and has been ordering them to attack him. Owens then heads off to look for AOP. He finds Rey Mysterio on the way, who offers him his lead pipe.

MATT HARDY vs. DREW MCINTYRE- 3/10
Drew cut a good heel promo on Matt before the match, resulting in Matt attacking him. Drew came back and won anyway.

CHARLOTTE & BECKY IN THE LOCKER ROOM EARLIER TONIGHT- didn’t like it
Charlotte tried to recruit Becky to team up with her against the Kabuki Warriors. Didn’t they just do this a few weeks ago and not have any problems working together? Well now Becky doesn’t trust Charlotte and would rather fight the Kabuki Warriors alone. Becky looked like an asshole here, and her behavior has precluded me from having sort of sympathy for her when she gets her ass kicked two on one later tonight.

KEVIN OWENS IS STILL LOOKING FOR THE AUTHORS OF PAIN- Mojo Rawley decided to be an asshole and chuckle about his own dickish behavior, so Kevin Owens gave him what he deserved.

VIKING RAIDERS PROMO- fine
They issue an open challenge, putting their belts on the line. This results in a…

WWE RAW TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Viking Raiders(c) vs. the Street Profits- 4/10
This was fantastic for the 3:10 it got, but that just begs the question why it only got 3:10.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
We get mutual respect between the teams, which is interrupted by Seth Rollins with a mic. Rollins says that he hates to interrupt, but he really has to take care of something right now. He says they can stay out here if they want, but they clearly don’t. This did a good job of not just allowing Rollins to come across like a self-important jerk, but also to show us that the other wrestlers feel this way, too.

SETH ROLLINS CALLS OUT THE AUTHORS OF PAIN- bad, on several levels
Instead of the AOP, he gets Kevin Owens and Rey Mysterio’s steel pipe. Or maybe it’s lead. They keep changing their minds. Owens tells Rollins to drop the charade because they both know AOP isn’t here because if they were Owens would have found them by now. We then cut to backstage where the AOP were just arriving, then cut to a commercial.
When we get back to a commercial, Owens and Rollins are arguing about AOP’s impending arrival. Owens finds it awfully convenient that AOP happen to show up when he and Rollins are in the ring together. Rollins says that since he clearly can’t convince Owens that he is on his side by fighting alongside him, he will just leave.
AOP showed up on the TitanTron and cut promos in their native languages. Then, instead of AOP coming out, Sami Zayn and Mojo Rawley came out. Sami explains that he is allowed to be on both shows because of his manager’s license. Sorry WWE. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t never mention the concept of a manager’s license, then suddenly pull it out of your ass as an excuse for why someone can show up on the other show, and especially in a promotion where you have someone’s tag team partner often at ringside for their matches. Shouldn’t those wrestlers be using that as an excuse to show up on both shows to make more money and try to win more championships?
The predictable happened, with Sami trying to recruit Owens but wanting him to apologize to Mojo first. Mojo cut a promo on Owens that was actually pretty good, saying “everyone is tough with a steel pipe in their hands.” Owens responded by saying “let’s test that theory,” then threw the pipe to Mojo, and while Mojo was distracted catching the pipe, Owens hit him with a stunner. Zayn left, and Owens beat the crap out of Mojo with the pipe in a way that exposed that it was clearly not made out of steel, lead, or any other metal.
Owens came off a little bit like a jerk here, the exposure of the poor-looking prop made the show look low-rent and fake, the segment as a whole felt like a stalling tactic rather than a segment with any merit of its own, and in order to engage in this pointless stalling tactic they had to create a rule that not only doesn’t stand up to scrutiny but which will surely be forgotten by next week and never mentioned again.

BUDDY MURPHY PROMO- Guys… BUDDY MURPHY VS. ALEISTER BLACK IS GETTING PPV TIME! Please, G-d, let them give this an appropriate amount of time.

ALEISTER BLACK vs. AKIRA TOZAWA- no rating, good… squash?
This was definitely a squash, but they still let Tozawa do a lot of cool stuff even though he wasn’t hitting offense because he was dodging Black’s kicks or doing something cool like a dive that got reversed, so he always looked impressive.

CHARLY CARUSO’S INTERVIEW WITH HUMBERTO CARRILLO IS INTERRUPTED BY ZELINA VEGA & ANDRADE- good
They showed us a video package of Carrillo doing cool things first and Charly built him up verbally so that he still felt like a big deal even though he was immediately interrupted. A shoving match happened while they shouted about something (I don’t speak much Spanish but I assume it was having a match) “tonight.”

“LIV MORGAN’S MAKEOVER” IS COMING SOON- umm… sure

HUMBERTO CARRILLO vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS (w/Zelina Vega)- 6.75/10
With no evidence, Lawler is convinced that they must be fighting over Zelina. Of course.
The match was great, minus one ugly Arabian Press. Humberto won and the announcers put it over as a huge deal for him, and also as a huge deal that this was Andrade’s first loss since coming to Raw. The finish saw Vega get bumped due to botched interference right before Andrade got rolled up, so they argued a lot after the match.

REY MYSTERIO JR. PROMO- good babyface stuff, but it was a little silly that this whole “journey” he talked about of losing his confidence and his son giving him the encouragement that he needed to regain it and then winning the title only took a total of about two shows.

KEVIN OWENS IS STILL LOOKING FOR AOP- A Valued Backstage Crewmember™ tells Owens he just saw them head to their van.

ALEISTER BLACK PROMO- meh

BUDDY MURPHY vs. ZACK RYDER (w/Curt Hawkins)- 1.5/10
Fine for the two minutes it got.

KEVIN OWENS DESTROYS AOP’S VAN… BUT IT’S A TRAP!
Yup. Rollins is working with AOP. I thought the reveal here tried too hard to be artsy, with Rollins looking like a cartoon villain without being the level of “IT WAS ME, AUSTIN!” over the top that is necessary to make that work.

SETH ROLLINS PROMO- MUST SEE!
Rollins tells us that he was telling the truth when he had nothing to do with AOP but “the truth wasn’t good enough for you!” He then launched into an AMAZING promo about how “nothing is good enough” for the fans (“WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO?!”). Maybe it’s recency bias, but I might well vote for this for promo of the year.

They showed us Kevin Owens being stretchered off after taking a car door to the head and a Curb Stomp into the concrete parking lot.

HANDICAP MATCH: Becky Lynch vs. the Kabuki Warriors- 6.75/10
While exciting, this suffered from the same issue as last week where Becky lasting so long made the Kabuki Warriors look weak. The story they told was that the Kabuki Warriors were frustrated by their inability to beat Becky so I can’t fault them for going a long time before giving us the DQ, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a little frustrating. The post-match beat-down was very good, though, and that Insane Elbow through the table looked FANTASTIC.

THE OC PROMO- good

CHARLOTTE VISITS BACKY IN THE TRAINER’S ROOM- Becky didn’t look beaten enough for my tastes. Charlotte was a jerk, but like I said before, Becky deserved it. The Kabuki Warriors assaulted Charlotte with a chair in the hallway.

ERICK ROWAN vs. A JOBBER- no rating, good squash
This jobber grew a brain and stole the mystery pet, then left it on the ramp and tired to win by count-out. Rowan got back to the ring in time and obliterated the jobber. This got the concept across well (both with Rowan’s shouting “WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!” at the jobber for “trying to hurt somebody I love!” and his obliteration of the poor soul) while doing so in a way that didn’t feel like a repeat of what we’ve seen in recent weeks.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS THE KABUKI WARRIORS- They dared someone to challenge them for their titles at TLC. I guess this means we’re getting an open challenge at the PPV.

CHARLOTTE & BECKY CUT A PROMO FROM THE TRAINER’S ROOM- They want a TLC match against the Kabuki Warriors

THE STREET PROFITS ARE DOING AN WEEKEND UPDATE RIP-OFF- atrocious
Even worse, they’re making fun of what are supposed to be serious kayfabe situations. WHY CAN’T WWE JUST LET THESE GUYS CUT A PROMO AND WRESTLE? They piped in cheers, laughter, and boos. It was f*cking terrible.

WWE UNITED STATES TITLE MATCH: Rey Mysterio Jr.(c) vs. AJ Styles- 6.75/10
Another very good match with a frustrating finish. Said finish was Randy Orton showing up to distract AJ after AJ hit the Styles Clash, allowing Rey to roll AJ up for the win. Yes, this allows AJ to once again say that Randy cost him the title, but I think there is more heat in Rey winning clean and AJ still blaming him not being champion on Randy’s actions in the first match. Plus, this would give Rey some actual credibility as champion, which is important to his story about regaining his confidence.
They almost didn’t get off the air in time, as the copyright appeared on the screen before the roll-up happened. My guess is that they didn’t get an overrun, as my DVR still had half an hour left on it.

This was good episode of Raw. It wasn’t as good was the previous too weeks, but I still thought it was good. The Rollins/Owens stuff definitely helped boost it up, but I also appreciate how good of a rush-job they did to set up a PPV card. Of course, it’s their own fault that they’re in that position in the first place, so maybe I shouldn’t be giving them too much credit. Either way, I think they’ve found a solid formula over the past few weeks. The trick now is to not do moronic sh*t with it like try to turn the Street Profits into news satire show anchors.

[Big Red Machine]

Oops. Wrong sub-forum. Sorry, boss.

[KILLdozer]

Lana sucks now. Entirely.