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In comparison to recent weeks, the December 10th episode of Monday Night Raw was a show littered with several plus points.
Firstly, the main event TLC bout between Seth Rollins and Baron Corbin was a great match. Throw in more domination from Drew McIntyre, new Tag Team Champions, and arguably the best promo of Natalya’s career, and the show was solid if not spectacular. And right now, “solid if not spectacular” is a huge improvement on “god-awful, desperate, and nonsensical”.
It’s been well documented, but the December 3rd Raw episode was officially the lowest-rated offering in the long-running show’s near-26-year-history. However you choose to look at it, however, you may try to rationalise it, however you try to frame it, that’s bad. Like, really bad.
That said, there were still some odd, peculiar moments dotted throughout this week's Raw broadcast. Of course, managing to maintain high quality throughout a live three-hour TV show is always going to be a tough task, but the WWE doesn’t help themselves on that front; often making boneheaded decisions or questionable creative calls.
With all of that taken into account, then, let’s take a look at the five most utterly head-scratching moments from this most recent episode of Monday Night Raw.
#5 Again Highlighting the Lesnar Situation
To give WWE some leeway, their plans for the Universal Championship were thrown up in the air once Roman Reigns revealed his leukemia battle.
With that in mind, the only two options on the table for them as the new Universal Champ at that point in time were Braun Strowman or Brock Lesnar. And thus, the decision was made, rightly or wrongly, to put the gold back on Paul Heyman’s Beast.
It’s one thing to have the belt on the absentee Lesnar, but the WWE have to be careful with how they present Brock and the Raw brand’s biggest prize. Having the Universal Champion only appear once every two or three months is hugely undermining to the brand and its main title, so referring to Lesnar’s absence – as was the case on this week’s show – is a questionable move.
To go even further than that, though, Seth Rollins highlighted that Brock hasn’t actually competed on Raw since 2002. That’s a whopping 16 years!
Sure, many of those 16 years were spent either on SmackDown, trying out for the NFL, or competing in UFC, but the message presented by Rollins’ simply came off as Lesnar not deeming the company’s biggest show as being worth his time since the Attitude Era came to a close.
By presenting Lesnar as someone who deems Raw as unimportant, you have the risk of having the fans starting to think the same thing.
#4 Making Renee look stupid
Since arriving in the WWE in 2012, Renee Young has been a fantastic addition to the company. Whether as a backstage interviewer, a panel host or at the commentary table, the Canadian has regularly impressed in whatever job she has been tasked with.
In recent weeks, Renee has sadly been made to look like a fool on Raw at times, largely down to the heel turn of Dean Ambrose. In the WWE narrative, fans are to believe that Young only really speaks to her husband on a Monday - which is ridiculous.
It would be one thing to have Renee avoid talking about the Ambrose heel turn and his assaults on Seth Rollins, but to have the on-air Renee Young character questioned on that by Michael Cole and Corey Graves just makes her look and sound foolish.
Away from that issue, however, the December 10th episode of Raw saw Renee scripted to back up Sasha Banks and Bayley as true, true BFFs.
Renee siding with the babyface heroes? Great. Renee then going off on Graves for questioning the sincerity of the Sasha and Bayley friendship? That just made Renee seem as if she’s never watched these two former Women’s Champions during their time in NXT and on the Raw brand.
Whether this was scripted for Renee or whether she spouted those lines on the fly, it served to hugely undermine the on-air Renee Young character’s legitimacy.
#3 Ronda wants to Fight?
Whichever way you look at it, Ronda Rousey’s WWE career has proved to be an unprecedented success.
Away from her having become the Raw Women’s Champion, Rousey has had some absolutely fantastic matches in her fledgeling in-ring career so far, and the reactions to her are always huge at house shows, Raws, and PPVs.
On this week’s Raw, however, Rousey was made to look like an idiot. Storming out to confront Nia Jax and Tamina Snuka, the UFC icon put on her best angry face as she made her intentions clear: she wasn’t there to talk or strike poses, she was there to fight!
And with that, Ronda entered the ring, glared at Jax and Snuka, and the proceeded to do absolutely zero fighting.
Rousey would stand ringside whilst Ember Moon defeated Tamina, but that was it. So Ronda was half right, as in she wasn’t there to talk or to strike poses. Her being there to fight but ultimately not fighting at all? That just makes her look like she’s full of false promises and is all bark and no bite.
Whoever okay’d all of this needs to seriously look at the Ronda Rousey character. Either let her be the all-fighting ass-kicker or don’t have her spouting lines based purely on bravado and little else.
#2 Baron takes the blame
As the December 10th edition of Raw opened, fans were given a promo battle between top star Seth Rollins and the nefarious GM-in-waiting Baron Corbin.
The WWE decided to have Rollins be the voice of the people; to lambast Corbin for the truly awful Raws we’ve seen over the past several weeks.
That in and of itself is absolutely fine – the top babyface speaking the truth and saying what so many fans have been thinking – but one of several missteps made during this segment was in the details of just why Corbin was at fault.
Bizarrely, the creative decision to have Drake Maverick urinate on Bobby Roode’s robe a few weeks ago was seemingly pegged as a creative call of Baron Corbin’s – which just makes no sense whatsoever. But if Rollins is saying everything that happened on the show has been written and designed by Corbin, that has to fall under his watch, too.
It’s one thing to blame the Corbin character for what we have seen play out on the WWE TV show each Monday – as a character, he’s the boss of the fictional show we see – but to actually make specific mention of Corbin being responsible for the writing of the show that’s done by the WWE creative team? That’s nonsensical on so, so many levels. And yet again, this was something that pretty much slapped Raw’s viewers across the face.
#1 Pointing out record low Ratings
One thing that the WWE has never been able to hide from, for better or for worse, is their ratings. And boy, has it been a bad few weeks for ratings.
To highlight just how bad things have been for Raw, the December 3rd edition of Monday Night Raw drew the lowest rating in the weekly show’s history.
When it comes to TV ratings, that information is widely available to the public each and every week. So sure, the control of that info is essentially out of the WWE’s hands. That said, surely the company should be doing everything in its power to not publicise utterly dismal TV ratings.
Instead of that, however, the December 10th episode of Raw took the show’s biggest babyface – Seth Rollins – and had him point out just how awful Raw’s ratings have been.
The WWE, via Rollins’ mic work, basically told you that what they’ve been serving up to you lately has been absolute garbage; which will have those of you who’ve stuck around questioning just exactly what you’ve been sticking around for.
Rollins saying that Baron Corbin has run Raw into the ground? That’s fine. To specifically make mention of the all-time low ratings? That’s just stupid to do on your own TV show.
