All the buzz surrounding this week’s Monday Night Raw was geared towards the scheduled return of Bill Goldberg.
After 12 years away from WWE, the former WCW Champion was set to return to answer Brock Lesnar’s challenge to a match, but there were several reasons, apart from this, to tune in to Raw this week.
How would the build to the three Hell In A Cell matches continue? Would anybody step up to challenge Braun Strowman? And would anyone else make it on to Chris Jericho’s list?
#1 “Sparkle Crotch”
Anything that Chris Jericho does at the minute seems to get over, the man is on a roll.
This even includes being called ’Sparkle crotch’ by Seth Rollins. The crowd chanted this new nickname throughout the opening segment and even during Jericho & Rollins’ match. The term ’sparkle crotch’ was even trending on Twitter at one point.
The crowd is eating up everything that Jericho does currently, and after tensions were teased between he and his best friend Kevin Owens on this week’s Raw, could a face turn for Y2J lay ahead in the near future?
#2 Loserville
A loss to the Golden Truth is never a good sign but when it marks the third straight defeat for Titus O’Neil you begin to wonder where he can go from here.
Teaming up with The Shining Stars against the Golden Truth and Mark Henry, the winners of this bout seemed fairly obvious, especially considering Titus’ recent gimmick change.
However, three veterans who are fairly irrelevant currently picked up the win and added yet another loss to O’Neil’s record and makes you question why they even bothered giving him a new gimmick if he’s just going to be jobbed out every week.
#3 Neville jobs to Psycho Bo
Another jobbing role that nobody wanted to see this week was taken by Neville in a defeat to Bo Dallas.
I understand that Dallas needed to look strong this week in order to establish his new, aggressive persona, but was Neville really the best man to sacrifice for this? Surely someone lower on the card could have been used or even a jobber would have sufficed this week considering that Bo was to attack Curtis Axel post-match.
One things for sure, the immediate future is not looking good for Neville right now.
#4 Dana botches again
Can Dana get anything right?
Bless her, she tries, but she continues to look way out of her depth on the main roster.
This week in a match against Bayley, Dana was presumably supposed to put her feet on the ropes for extra leverage whilst pinning Bayley to get the cheap win. Sounds like a simple spot, yet she got her foot nowhere near the ropes and this lead to a confusing finish to the match that makes Bayley look weak for losing clean.
It seems obvious that Dana was called up too soon and has not shown many signs of improvement in her time on the main roster. If she continues to make mistakes that affect not just her, but also her opponents then she could be off of Raw before she’s even able to find her feet. (No pun intended)
#5 Abominable Strowman
Another Raw, another squash match for Braun Strowman.
This week he fought three opponents, the ‘Mile High Trio’, and made quick work of them. It was an entertaining enough match for what it was but it was what happened after the match that was most noteworthy.
Strowman once again got on the mic and demanded competition, this brought out Sami Zayn who stepped up to Braun and looks to be the man to give him his first real test since he broke out as a singles competitor.
This feud was predicted by an excellent contributor to this site in a wonderfully written article last week, which you can find here.
#6 The Rusevs
What on Earth was going on here?
For some unknown reason, Rusev & Lana felt obliged to introduce us to the Rusev family in a strange and frankly dull segment on this week’s Raw.
We were shown pictures of Mama Rusev and Papa Rusev amongst others, before Roman Reigns came out to interrupt proceedings and this lead to Rusev beating the US Champion. It was an extremely odd segment and didn’t do anything to further this feud, surely these two men and WWE creative are capable of more than this.
#7 The Club look weak again
No! No! No! No!
There is no way that Gallows & Anderson should have been made to look weak after last week’s dominant display, yet that’s exactly what happened and in dramatic fashion.
Big Cass defeated Karl Anderson in singles action in a little over a minute and halted any momentum that The Club had gained from last week, there wasn’t even a beating dished out by them post-match.
Where is the logic in booking one of the most decorated tag teams on the current roster as a joke? Things need to change for The Club and it needs to happen soon.
#8 The Sasha/Charlotte Interviews
To build towards their historic Hell In A Cell match on October 30th, Charlotte and Sasha Banks each sat down with WWE Hall of Famer Lita for separate sit-down interviews.
This seemed like a good idea on paper, yet fell some way short of selling this match. It may have worked better if the two foes were face to face and could bounce off one another, at least then there would have been some drama and tension.
Hopefully WWE has something big planned for next week’s go-home show to give this match the build it deserves.
#9 Next week’s Raw
So, Stephanie McMahon asked Raw General Manager Mick Foley to come up with a main event for next week’s Raw and he came up with Kevin Owens vs Seth Rollins vs Chris Jericho in a triple threat match.
I’m sure there will be some great action in this match, but what’s the point? There’s no stipulation on this match such as if Jericho wins, he gets added to the Universal Title match at Hell In A Cell, so what are they fighting for?
Also, it was announced that next week Cesaro & Sheamus will face the New Day in a non-title match, six days before they face them for the Titles at the Hell In A Cell pay-per-view.
Why?
That just gives the match away before they need to and for no reason, again there is no stipulation added to this match, seems pointless to me.
#10 Goldberg Returns
Now to the main talking point and closing segment of this week’s Raw, the long-awaited return of Bill Goldberg.
Goldberg has never been known as a great promo guy but cut a memorable, heartfelt and intense promo to mark his return to Monday Night Raw and, in doing so, accepted Brock Lesnar’s challenge to a match.
I have to admit that personally, I wasn’t particularly excited about Goldberg’s return but he impressed me this week and the fans in attendance were certainly excited to see him. He got me invested in what looks to be his last ever match and I’m looking forward to seeing how Brock Lesnar will respond to him next week.
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