Monday Night Raw hailed from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, bringing a slightly strange but still eventful evening.
The biggest buzz in the night was that The Rock was in the house to film for an upcoming Paige-family inspired movie. This caused several signs to pop up for The Great One throughout the arena.
Sadly, Rocky didn’t appear in the ring until after the show went off of the air which was a bummer for those of us in not in attendance. The Rock even called CM Punk in the middle of the ring, a certainly outrageous moment had it happened while the live cameras were running.
As much as the Punk phone call would’ve been fun to see on screen, that’s not the show the TV audience witnessed.
What we saw instead saw was Kofi Kingston landing on his head all for a hypothetical booty-juiced dessert, a heel Sheamus getting cheered for kicking a babyface after his match was over, and the gigantic Braun Strowman kipping up like a cruiserweight.
All of those moments and more lie ahead, so proceed on to relive the botchiest and most outrageous moments of the night.
#5 Confiscated pro-Matt Hardy sign
It might be misleading to say that this sign was confiscated because it was pro-Matt Hardy rather than being anti-Roman Reigns, but that doesn’t make the Hardy side of it untrue.
News that this very visible “Delete Roman” sign was taken away from the fan that brought it made the rounds on social media, so much so that even the man who receives premonitions from the Seven Deities himself commented on it.
While sharing a news report describing the sign removal, Broken Matt tweeted out these words:
Keep up the good fight, Matt Hardy.
#4 Thank you, Sheamus
Enzo Amore & Big Cass defeated former Raw Tag Champs Sheamus & Cesaro for a shot at Gallows’ and Andersons’ titles at Fastlane.
The winners could’ve celebrated their victory gracefully, but that’s not how Enzo does it. He took to the microphone and braggadociously kept telling The Swiss Superman “We’ve got that Kryptonite” over and over again.
Amore should’ve kept his eye on both of the losers because Sheamus came hard on his left side with a stiff kick to the jaw.
The most outrageous part of this post-match attack is how exactly the crowd responded. A loud chorus of “Thank you, Sheamus” chants erupted, which is most likely not what WWE planned for. Sheamus is by far the most heelish person in this entire mix and up until the last month or so, Enzo was a huge babyface.
Fan support is quickly waning for the Smacktalker Skywalker, something that should be considered if they’re persistent about him being a babyface.
#3 Kofi landed on his head for ice cream
In a strange storyline involving Russian espionage and digital blueprints for ice cream, New Day took on Jinder Mahal and Rusev to protect their intellectual property.
One of the big highlights from this match also turned out to be one of the scarier spots as Kofi Kingston leapt over the top rope to take out Handsome Rusev on the outside. The problem for Kofi was in the landing – he pretty much landed on his head.
Immediately following this, Xavier Woods snuck up behind Lana and blew his trombone loudly.
This caused an extremely delayed reaction of her being startled. Lana threw up the lone hacker iPad that solely contained the stolen blueprints because WWE creative doesn’t understand cloud computing or the internet.
Woods destroyed the tablet, saving the day.
#2 What agility!
It’s hard to imagine that a kip up would ever get such a positive reaction. Considering this move happened in the middle of a match between Braun Strowman and The Big Show, it was quite a surprise.
Big Show tried to take the mammoth Braun down with a wrist lock but the former Wyatt Family heavy must’ve been studying some Cesaro matches recently. He knew the perfect amount of fancy footwork to escape the hold, pulling off some manoeuvres that nobody expected from him.
#1 Powerslams are hard
This big hoss main event might’ve been way better than expected but it still had a moment of being a little rough around the edges. Near the end of the contest, Big Show went for a splash off of the second rope only for Braun Strowman to sneak in underneath him... sort of.
Big Beef didn’t exactly clear the veteran smoothly but we’ll give him a little credit because passing underneath him is what was the intended purpose and that happened.
As if that wasn’t enough, though, the running powerslam that followed looked like a major struggle for Strowman. No matter how much the former WCW Heavyweight Champion has trimmed down his physique, Big Show is still a monster that’s not easily thrown around.
After this competitive, hard fought match, the villainous Roman Reigns decided to attack the man who was just moments earlier garnering “This is Awesome” chants from the LA. crowd.
Braun was able to fend off this attack and hit a much smoother running powerslam, which is good news for him. It looks like as long as his opponents are under 300 lbs, he should be okay with the move.
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