This is the first RAW after WWE Payback 2017, a PPV that, if one were to try and summarise with one adjective, it’d be ‘slightly above average’. Sadly, while Payback only had one match that was particularly bad (three guesses as to which one), none of the matches truly stood out in terms of quality.
For a show that’s meant to be the first major PPV after WrestleMania, Payback, like most episodes of RAW, had its flaws.
Speaking of RAW, this one wasn’t particularly good, either. While nothing stood out in terms of being as overtly bad as the House of Horrors match, RAW this week failed to capitalise on much of the post-Payback drama, and was, all in all, a show filled with logical inconsistencies, which we’ll get to shortly.
And with that, let the rant begin.
No logic
There were two glaring flaws in the writing this week that made the RAW wrestlers look like dopes. The first took place during the opening eight-woman tag team match. The story here was that Nia Jax was an unstoppable force that could run through absolutely anyone with little effort.
If Nia Jax is invincible unless she’s in a handicap match, why wouldn’t Alexa just tag Jax in and have her demolish everyone one at a time? If Nia’s supposed to be this absolute juggernaut, why didn’t she start the match, crush all of her opponents quickly, and win decisively?
This sort of inconsistency exposes the writers as having a lack of understanding in the segments they’re producing and makes even good speakers like Alexa Bliss look bad.
The second flaw here was demonstrated during the long promo between Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, The Miz and Finn Balor. Seth and Finn both started their promos by stating that they wanted a shot at Brock Lesnar’s Universal Championship. This made sense for both guys, given their respective histories in relation to the belt.
However, Dean Ambrose came out, followed quickly by the Miz. Ambrose politely reminded everyone that Brock wasn’t going to be around for a while and that he, the Intercontinental Champion, was looking for a fight.
Thus, to solve this quandary, Ambrose pulled out his magic cell phone and informed everyone that Kurt had told him there’d be a Triple Threat match to determine the new #1 contender for the IC championship…instead of for the Universal Championship.
So just like that, we’re supposed to forget that the Universal Championship exists and that anyone that wants that belt should settle for the Intercontinental Championship instead.
I had a feeling something like this would happen were Brock to win the Universal Championship (although, Brock winning at WrestleMania was still the lesser of two evils). Because his contract allows limited appearances, Lesnar is once again repeating the events that occurred when he was champion between late 2014 and 2015.
We are now left with a RAW that’s bereft of its top championship, leaving everyone to suddenly expect the Intercontinental Championship to have the prestige of being the top title on RAW. This was despite the fact that the Miz and Ambrose have fought over this belt for months in 2016, and them feuding over it again almost a year later brings virtually nothing to that belt.
Moreover, why didn’t the Miz follow in Balor’s and Rollins’ footsteps and challenge for the IC championship? If he’s as big of a star as he thinks he is, shouldn’t he feel he’s worthy of the Universal Championship? It doesn’t make sense for a man that thinks so highly of himself to settle for a secondary championship.
Tiny details like this one make the wrestlers look like fools because they’re not basing their promos on things real people would do.
In going in this direction, WWE buried the Intercontinental Championship as a true secondary belt, exposed the flaws of having Lesnar as Universal Champion and as an added bonus, took over ten minutes to book a match that could’ve otherwise been booked in a promo one-tenth the length of this one.
Best and worst promos of the week:
For this week’s episode, special recognition needs to go to Alexa Bliss for cutting one of the best promos on the show. She comes across as so natural on the microphone in every way.
The way she worked the crowd chants (they chanted ‘Bayley’, to which Bliss replied, ‘Yes, I know her name, that’s why I’m thanking her!), the condescending tone she took with the babyfaces and all the words she used to really get the crowd to hate her.
Bliss is perfect in her current role as an over-confident, loudmouthed heel. This is one person that should have as few restrictions on her promos as possible. She’s doing a fantastic job with her promos, especially in regards to making the smaller details count.
If there’s one thing about WWE’s storylines I’ve come to dislike over the past few years, it’s this idea that whoever’s in a position of authority, especially on RAW, needs to remind everyone else that they’re in charge. It seems that WWE’s fixated on having the authority figures always be in control and that this needs to be forced as much as possible.
Take this week’s Bray Wyatt promo, for example. Wyatt said what he usually says, strange metaphors and allusions to the supernatural without making a lick of sense. He closed his promo with a vague threat of some kind, to which Angle replied, ‘this is my show’.
While Wyatt did have the last laugh, in the end, these words were actually more harmful than one might first realise. Angle acting as the omnipresent authority figure is a reminder to the fans that nothing ‘crazy’ or truly outrageous can happen in WWE unless the authority approves it.
Moreover, why did Wyatt even need to speak to Angle in the first place? If Wyatt’s entire goal was to disrupt the main event, why did he need to warn Angle of what he might do? Wyatt’s actions would’ve had a much greater impact, had he not appeared earlier in the show to confront Angle.
By having Bray speak to Angle, it lessened the significance of the surprise that we got when Bray did interfere in that main event match.
Those damn purple ropes
A final point of criticism for this week’s RAW: the whole purple ropes for the cruiserweights division is starting to mess with the flow of RAW. Though it has become a weekly occurrence, the time it took to set up the purple ropes for two cruiserweight matches really did drag down the show’s overall flow.
By booking two separate cruiserweight matches, the ring crew had to take down the red ropes, put up the purple ones and other elements of the ‘cruiserweight ring’, take all this stuff down, and then put the regular RAW aesthetics back in…TWICE.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: giving the cruiserweights their own ring colour scheme won’t be enough to distinguish them as wrestlers. They need to be treated like a genuine attraction, but that doesn’t mean giving them a special colour coding for everything associated with them.
The cruiserweights need to be built on multiple storylines that just happen to involve smaller and more agile wrestlers. Why do you think the feud between Neville and Austin Aries is so good? Is it because they wrestle in a purple ring? No, it’s because they’re two gifted cruiserweight wrestlers that let their athleticism tell a story.
THIS is what people want to see out of the cruiserweights, not 5 minutes of watching the ring crew make changes to the ring while the commentators drone on about nothing in particular.
Final thoughts
This week’s RAW, much like Payback the night before it, was very much a footnote in the annals of WWE history. Apart from the aforementioned issues, nothing else of note happened on the show.
We didn’t get to see the Hardy Boyz embrace their TNA gimmicks, Cesaro and Sheamus cut a generic heel promo that didn’t do them any favours, and Enzo Amore made less sense in his promos than normal, which is saying something.
We did get some good matches from an in-ring perspective, but again, nothing here had any long-term implications. Ultimately, the main event of the show had the same level of shenanigans that one’s to expect of RAW these days.
Joe cost Rollins a chance at the Intercontinental Championship, Bray did the same to Balor (which is likely to lead to Bray vs. Balor, which has the chance of being great, but only if WWE books it properly, and that’s a big IF), and Miz will be facing a man he’s faced countless times for a belt he held last year.
So much for new opportunities for these two on the bigger show.
You can expect more from me next week because unless things change in a major way in WWE’s creative department, they’ll have plenty of material for me to work with for many episodes of RAW to come.
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