This week, RAW was all about the Superstar shake-up. What does that mean? What were the rules? If a Superstar is traded to RAW, can they also be traded back to SmackDown because they’re now considered RAW talent? Unfortunately, none of these questions was answered, but we did get to see some new faces on the RAW brand.
So without further delay, let the rant begin.
WWE still don’t know how to use some people
RAW opened with Miz & Maryse acting as John Cena & Nikki Bella. They’re the first two SmackDown stars to jump to RAW. The segments are still hilarious, but there should be a worry that the WWE might run this into the ground.
It seems like whenever the WWE creative team come up with something and choose to run with it, they keep doing it to the point of overexposure.
Given that, Miz is likely to keep doing these Cena impressions for months, until at some point it becomes his dominant gimmick. He won’t carve out an identity for himself, but will instead continue to do this as a reminder to everyone that John Cena still exists, even though he’s on hiatus.
WWE will likely do this until John Cena himself returns, thus ruining any surprise that return that might have.
Sami Zayn was behaving like an annoying paranoiac during his segment tonight. He was acting like someone lacking in self-confidence, asking question after question after question. You could tell that Angle, or at least his character, was annoyed by Sami. What is the point of booking Sami this way?
How is he supposed to get over and sell more merchandise if even his on-screen boss finds him irritating?
This isn’t doing him any favours. In fact, it’s actually a major hindrance to his success. WWE seem to have realised that Zayn’s an excellent wrestler, which is why he wins matches. But when it comes to actually progressing further up the ladder, they keep putting him in awkward segments to halt any momentum he seems to obtain.
Maybe they’re trying to prevent another Daniel Bryan situation by keeping an iron grip on Zayn’s popularity. Or maybe they’re still punishing him because he’s so particular about his matches. Either way, as long as Zayn continues to be mistreated and booked like someone you don’t want to like, you can be sure people will be critical of that happening.
To this day, I still have no idea what the point is of having someone get destroyed by the Big Show. We get it, he’s big and intimidating. But he’s also retiring within less than a year and hasn’t played a major role in company storylines in over three years.
If you book someone to get crushed by the Big Show, you might as well etch the word, ‘jabroni’ into that person’s forehead, because there’s little chance, if any, of recovering from such an occurrence. This is what happened to Curt Hawkins, someone who appeared on RAW as its newest member and was given the jobber treatment within seconds.
Granted, while WWE does need jobbers, it doesn’t help them in any way if the first thing that they do is they lose to even bigger jobbers. That way, defeating this new person doesn’t have any relevance nor does it lead to bigger things. All in all, a waste of time with this.
Lastly, for this issue, WWE seem to have this unusual tendency to stretch segments as much as possible on RAW. Seth Rollins could’ve said the words, ‘I’m staying on RAW’ in less than a minute before announcing his intention to take care of unfinished business with Samoa Joe.
Instead, he prolonged it as much as possible and gave us a useless replay of Stephanie McMahon going through a table (because they just have to remind us of her, don’t they?). It would’ve been much more fun to see Joe and Seth have a more extensive brawl than to have this promo go overlong.
Big changes
This is what you tuned in for: to see who from SmackDown is coming to RAW (and by extension, who’ll be the next hot topic of my weekly rants). Well, needless to say, there were a few interesting choices, some predictable, and some genuinely surprising.
Apollo Crews was announced as coming to RAW earlier today. This is a big problem for him. He was initially drafted to SmackDown in the first draft because he was a small fish in a big pond. There was hope he’d have more chances on SmackDown, but they still didn’t do that much with him.
He’s been on the main roster for some time now, and I for one have not seen any character progression of any kind with him. His gimmick is still ‘King of Strong Smile’, and that’s it. No personal element nor any relatability. He’s in dire need of a major storyline or gimmick to help him stand out, which isn’t likely to happen on RAW.
Also read: WWE Draft 2017/Superstar Shake-up results: Complete list of transfers
The Miz & Maryse are back on RAW. This was to be expected, as the Miz has improved by leaps and bounds over the past year. However, Miz succeeded so much mainly because he was given more freedom in his promos on SmackDown, and RAW appears to be a much more restrictive environment (mainly because the big boss himself oversees it, and exerts far more control over what’s said and done).
If Miz isn’t allowed to go in the same direction he has over the past year, he’ll be in trouble. He needs to remain as the same boundary-pushing promo cutter without limits, otherwise whatever upwards momentum he has achieved could be destroyed.
Bray Wyatt is now on RAW. This was an unfortunate surprise because he looked like he belonged in SmackDown’s main event scene. With that roster having fewer main-eventers (and no part-timers), Wyatt had many opportunities to shine. He had quickly become a top star, and his WWE Championship win was a genuine feel good moment.
He might not enjoy that same degree of championship success now that he’s on RAW. But at least we get to see weird Bray Wyatt vs. Demon Balor, which will definitely be awesome.
Kalisto, Heath Slater & Rhyno were all announced as new members of the RAW roster without much fanfare. That should tell you how much is thought of them by WWE’s management. So much for Kalisto becoming the next Rey Mysterio in terms of popularity and sustained pushes.
Both Alexa Bliss and Mickie James are now on RAW as well. These two will add a nice dynamic to RAW as both of them have been performing well on the blue brand. Seeing either of them wrestling with RAW’s top women will mean fresh matches and hopefully exciting feuds.
The final new RAW star to mention is Dean Ambrose, who defeated Kevin Owens in a champion vs. champion match. Ambrose has been something of a ‘fallen’ star on SmackDown. He won the WWE Championship last year, but the reaction he got wasn’t anywhere near what WWE was expecting, especially given the monstrous ovation AJ Styles got when he won that belt from Ambrose.
Hopefully, Ambrose can grow a bit further on RAW, but that depends on how he’s booked in terms of character. If he keeps playing the ‘wacky’ gimmick instead of the more chaotic Ambrose he was earlier in his career, he might end up in mid-card purgatory faster than you can say ‘Lunatic Fringe’.
Braun Strowman was RAW’s MVP
It has been a very long time since I enjoyed a beatdown so much. Strowman managed to show remorselessness and cultivate an aura of danger about him in this fantastic assault on Roman Reigns. This was all booked perfectly. Strowman looked like a true juggernaut in this segment, attacking Reigns with increasing ferocity with each move.
This culminated in three truly memorable spots: the first was seeing Strowman throw Reigns as though he were a ragdoll. The second was when Reigns, while on a stretcher, got tossed over a ledge. That conjured up images of Brock Lesnar destroying Zack Gowen years ago, which made Lesnar look like a remorseless and sadistic monster.
The final one was when Strowman flipped the ambulance. While one has to take segments like this with a grain of salt in terms of realism, it was truly surprising and made Strowman look amazing.
That said, this is definitely NOT the reaction WWE was going for. Throughout this attack, the audience wasn’t booing Strowman; they were cheering for him and chanting in support of him. They even sang the ‘na na na na, hey hey, goodbye’ song as Reigns was taken out of the building.
This segment can only count as a true success if their secret plan all along was to make Strowman into a babyface monster (which I doubt very highly). But if so, it was a job well done, because Strowman now gets a louder reaction than Reigns could ever have hoped to get.
A small note on the commentary
Although other commentators have much worse qualities, tonight’s worst commentary job goes to Michael Cole, hands down. The reason for this is because Cole’s reactions are so bland and unrealistic, and he has one of the most important jobs in WWE: to sell what we’re seeing with his words.
He has to show emotion and use his voice to compliment whatever it is we’re seeing.
So when both Alexa Bliss and Mickie James came out, all he could come up with was the words, ‘Oh My’. That it, nothing more. Two simple words that, when spoken, sounded like he was forced to say that. He couldn’t show any emotion in these words and failed to convey any sense of excitement in his commentary.
In this respect, Cole didn’t do his job properly, considering that his primary duty is to tell the audience why they should care about what they see. This is why so many people still reminisce about the days of Jim Ross: despite any alleged accent issues, Ross could sell even the cheesiest of segments or the most inexperienced of rookies to the audience through carefully-chosen words and genuine passion.
Even when something was bad, he’d do whatever he could to soften the blow of any criticism.
But Cole? All he says is, ‘Oh My’ with such little effort and less emotion. No wonder people still criticise him, even though other WWE commentators are much worse in many respects.
Concluding remarks
This was a show worth seeing because it set the tone for the remainder of the year. Tonight the RAW roster changed in a major way, with several former SmackDown stars now on the red brand. This will change the kinds of match-ups we’ll be seeing in the future.
All in all, this episode of RAW wasn’t inherently bad, with most of the things worth ranting about being relatively small. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any systemic problems with RAW; it’s still way too long for a weekly show, and changing the faces we see on RAW is only half of the equation.
These new men and women need their time on their newfound home on Monday nights to be complemented with worthwhile storylines and interesting match-ups. Whether WWE’s higher-ups will truly deliver on that front remains to be seen.
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