With less than a week to go before WWE’s annual Royal Rumble event, Raw brought a fairly solid show that laid plenty of interesting seeds that should stir up the appeal to watch on Sunday. Sami Zayn was involved in the best match of the night against Seth Rollins and thanks to a Triple H musical distraction, he’s now in the Rumble.
The Zayn vs. Rollins match even got to go beyond 16 minutes, which is surprisingly rare for this three-hour show.
There were several negatives on tonight’s show even though that shouldn’t discourage anyone from still being excited about the Pay-Per-View weekend ahead. The following list features a Cruiserweight gutbuster that didn’t quite set up like hoped, a Roman Samoan drop that didn’t hit its mark, and a mysterious head wound to a former WCW Champion even though he was in no physical altercations on screen.
All this and more lie ahead.
Before we all become master sleuths to get to the bottom of this Goldberg head controversy, there’s no better time than now to review the five botchiest and most outrageous moments from this January 3rd edition of Raw...
#5 Botched Samoan Drop
Roman Reigns may have gotten an opportunity to earn back the United States Championship, but if he’s missing his own signature moves then he definitely won’t be successful. Roman sort of attempted a Samoan drop where he was not able to get Chris Jericho onto his shoulders, causing a brief struggle.
They brawled each other to the ground before Chris attempted a cover.
Kevin Owens was on commentary and at least tried to roll with this slip-up. He rooted for his best friend, cheering that he needed to “fight it off.” Jericho did fight it off here but when Roman tried the same move again moments later, there was no escaping.
#4 Lights out for Sheamus
Kicking off this edition is a botch from the Cesaro vs. Gallows match even though neither of them was involved. Karl Anderson came running down to the ring to attack Sheamus from behind, sending him head-first into the LED lights on the side of the ring. A square section of the lights was momentarily blacked out because of this.
This was actually a cool touch to this attack from behind. If he’s hitting so hard that it’s enough to knock the lights out then they must be getting stiff with each other.
#3 Gutbuster positioning problems
Those that watch 205 Live are aware of this Tony Nese signature move as well as what went wrong here. When an opponent is positioned facing down while lying on the top turnbuckle, Nese runs up to them and kicks them in the stomach hard enough to send them flying into the air.
He then gets underneath them to catch them on his shoulders, setting up a gutbuster on his knees. This did not happen for Nese on Raw.
Nese dropped TJ Perkins onto the ground when he realised he lacked the proper positioning for this move to work like normal. Tony then brought him closer to the middle of the ring to execute it properly.
#2 Speak up, Jinder and Enzo!
I understand that when a wrestler declares themselves a participant in the Royal Rumble they are scripted to do so, but in the context of the story why doesn’t everyone do that? Especially during those moments when your tag team partner has a mic in their hands and they’re in the very act of making the Rumble announcements, why not simply say “me too?”
There were no “me too”s for Enzo Amore or Jinder Mahal on this night, even though Big Cass and Rusev are now 2 of the 30 entrants. They were there in support of their brothers in arms, even though there was nothing stopping them in the moment, from doing so.
#1 Goldberg’s head blood
Raw went off of the air in a way that had the crowd super hyped. Brock Lesnar and Bill Goldberg were in the middle of a stare down, when all of a sudden The Undertaker showed up. It’s a bummer that they didn’t get physical but at least it left us wanting more. The segment ended great but that’s a complete 180 from where it was just a couple of minutes prior.
Goldberg fumbled his promo several times, even admitting so to the crowd in attendance. However, the even more noticeable gaffe was on his forehead. The story going around social media was that Bill busted his head after he headbutted a locker backstage.
Regardless of how he did it, the red stream running down the crevices of his cranium were incredibly distracting. Had the two other legends not shown up, this would’ve been a complete disaster of a show closer.
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