Monday Night Raw was coming off the heels of a lukewarm Roadblock Pay-Pay-View and needed something to re-invigorate the red brand. With the greatest best friend duo in the history of friendship back together, and an angry Goliath named Braun Strowman on the loose, Raw tried its best to put a foot forward in a new direction for the fans.
For every new step forward there’s bound to be a banana peel here and there thrown in WWE’s path and Monday night was no exception. Considering Mick Foley’s geography woes, Sin Cara’s inadvertent offence on the mighty Braun and Big E delivering a scalding burn to the Women’s Champion, the outrageousness were in full effect.
On the bright side, at least Enzo is now getting reprimanded for his awkward bout of very public nudity from November. So without further delay, here are five botches, slip ups, and outrageous moments from this last episode of Raw before Christmas...
#5 Close enough, Sin Cara
Sin Cara thought he was entering the ring to have a match with Titus O’Neil on Monday night, which should’ve been a warning that something was wrong. WWE hasn’t had any serious plans with the former Prime Time Player since he attempted murder playfully grabbed the arm of Vince McMahon.
This just so happened to be Braun Strowman’s night to destroy everything including Christmas, but that didn’t mean that Sin Cara wasn’t going to go out without an attempt at one suicide dive. The slip up here is that instead of Braun catching the luchador to slam him to the ground, he lost his balance and fell with him.
What was supposed to be a totally failed attempt by Sin Cara actually ended up being a poorly executed Tornado DDT. Offence is still offence, so we’ll give this one to the former Lucha Dragon.
#4 Sensitivity training for Enzo
This is a major botch on WWE’s Human Resources Department. Let’s remember that Enzo Amore’s infamous backstage streaking happened way back on the November 21st episode of Monday Night Right.
Big Cass locked him out of his locker room after he showered, so he strutted around in full view of all backstage personnel, Rusev’s wife and a live camera feed broadcasting to the USA Network. All of this happened, and he made no attempt whatsoever to cover himself up and HR bothers to send him a letter only now?
And what’s this business about sending a letter? Raw was in Ohio tonight and Enzo, and Big Cass are from New Jersey, did WWE mail the letter to the Arena in Columbus? Whoever is running that department is doing a terrible job.
#3 Cheap pop slip up
Mick Foley has been receiving cheap pops in cities all over the world for many years, so it’s understandable that he may get one wrong eventually. Columbus, Ohio wasn’t so forgiving of this flub.
The Raw GM thought his announcement of a main event tag team match between Seth Rollins & Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens & Chris Jericho would get a rise out of this town that most definitely wasn’t Pittsburgh. They two towns aren’t even in the same state. They’re in neighbouring states, so at least he was sort of close.
#2 Charlotte in a month
New Day are learning to cope with life after title belts. They were very optimistic about their loss, saying that Ric Flair would’ve never become 16-time World Champion had he not lost 15 times. That’s good logic, but that also set up a mighty fine burn on The Nature Boy’s daughter.
People have speculated already that the constant back and forth of the Raw Women’s Championship is a way to help pad Ric’s daughter’s title reigns so that she’d one day match or even break his record. This observation was not lost on New Day, so that’s why Big E gave us that hilarious one-liner.
#1. Kip-ups aren’t easy
If you think that Bayley was just a tad off with this kip up, your name might be Michael Cole. From the announce booth, he described this Bayley spring to her feet as “ungraceful” and said that it was not as good as Charlotte’s.
Bayley still made it to her feet, and this was an overall good match, but if Michael Cole is going to call out your slip up on commentary then the spot is fair game.
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