Tremendous Tirades 8.25.14: WWE Monday Night Raw

Introduction
As a reminder, this will not be another traditional recap, but instead it will be a mash up of the Rs, Instant Analysis and my usual Twitter ramblings I would do during the shows; completely uncensored and as the ideas flow unfiltered to the old keyboard. Remember, this is a review; and I am here to review the show. As always, I encourage discussion and even disagreement, just do so in a respectful manner. I will be doing the review for Raw and most PPVs and iPPVs going forward.

WWE MONDAY NIGHT RAW 8.25.14

OFFICIAL RESULTS

Rusev defeated Jack Swagger @ 12:30 via ass kicking [***]

#1 Contender’s Match For The US Title: Cesaro defeated RVD @ 3:35 via pin [**]

Non-Title Match: Paige © defeated Natalya @ 2:45 via pin [NR Under Three Minutes]

WWE Tag Team Title Match: Stardust and Goldust defeated The Usos © @ 7:33 via count out [**]

Non-Title Match: Dolph Ziggler © defeated Damien Sandow as The Miz @ 2:20 via [NR Under Three Minutes]

Handicap Match: Roman Reigns defeated Kane and Rollins @ 2:40 via DQ [NR Under Three Minutes]

Los Matadores defeated SlaterGator @ 4:00 via pin [*]

Bo Dallas defeated Kofi Kingston @ 1:35 via pin [NR Under Three Minutes]

John Cena defeated Bray Wyatt @ 4:10 via DQ [**]

Cena, Show and Henry defeated The Wyatts @ 6:45 via pin [**]

---

Cena is reaching Lesnar at Night of Champions.

Hall of Fame Forum: Michael Cole hosted, with Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels appearing. They are sitting at a glorified Raw announcer’s table. Hogan is the one that believes that Cena can win, while HBK and Flair think he doesn’t have a chance. They rambled for a few minutes and John Cena made his appearance. Cena offered his respect to the hall of famers, and then said he got his ass beat at Summerslam. But when it was over, al he wanted to do was face Lesnar again, and it won’t be the same, because he will take the fight to Lesnar. He’s not going to beat Lesnar, he is going to beat his ass. It was fine, but nothing special at all, and certainly not the money promo I felt he needed to deliver here. Maybe this would have been better with just Cena, because the addition of the hall of famers really added nothing.

Rusev vs. Jack Swagger: Zeb is still gone from Rusev’s kick at Summerslam. Good open to the match as they brawled right away, Swagger is upset and feel she let people down and wanted revenge. Rusev focused on the injured ribs of Swagger, who sold the injury well. Good spot where Rusev countered the Swagger splash, but Swagger countered that into the ankle lock. They’ve done good teases with that, and Rusev continues to sell well when needed. These guys have actually developed a good chemistry. Late in the match Rusev relentlessly attacked the ribs of Swagger, and the referee called for the stoppage. I like that finish, you need to condition the audience to new finishes from time to time, and Rusev is a good guy to do that with. I also think that even in these hard fought losses, people care more about Swagger now than they were when he was doing nothing and beating jobbers with no real payoff.

Swagger gets checked on in the back, and Bo Dallas reminds him that he lost again, and let his country down, again.

Sheamus is out for commentary.

Who Faces Sheamus Next?: RVD vs. Cesaro for a shot at the US Title, which is nice to know that both Sheamus and the US Title are still a thing. These two faced off on the Summerslam pre-show, which was won by RVD. These two do not have good chemistry, they do not mesh well and the matches between them generally feel slow and lackadaisical. The same happened here. The right man won, as Cesaro and Sheamus will have a good match, plus they will beat the hell out of each other doing so. Not a great match (but not bad), but I like where they are going here.

Natalya vs. Paige III: These two fought two times last week, and Natalya won both (due to distraction) one via pin and one via submission. You’d think she’d get a title match for beating the champion twice, but wins and losses mean nothing because it is only about AJ distracting Paige. They had a fine back and forth match, Paige got to win and skipped around to celebrate. AJ then made her way out, distracted Paige and allowed Natalya to take her out with a clothesline. AJ called Paige an English muffin, and said she knew Paige was sincere when she said she loved her, but not as sincere as she was. AJ then gave her a creepy hug and kissed her hand. Skipping occurred. Paige won, which was good as they got away from the bullshit distraction finishes, and I like the mind games aspect of the feud.

Seth Rollins Presents – The Eulogy of Dean Ambrose: We have our funeral set up in the ring, and Citizen Kane comes out to host the proceeding. He said it is not about loss, but about the future of the WWE, Seth Rollins. I am pretty sure that the image they have displayed for Ambrose is a mug shot. Rollins put himself over for picking Ambrose to be in the Shield, and then really rubbed it in that he took him out last week. He waxed poetic about Ambrose not knowing to walk away, and that we will likely never see Ambrose again, he created and ended the Shield. Roman Reigns, finally remembering that Rollins turned on him and has been kicking his friend’s ass for months, decides to make his way out to the ring. Reigns brawled with and took out Kane, and then hit the ring for a brawl with Rollins. Reigns ran wild, and Kane pulled Rollins to safety. It’s about time that Reigns cared about Rollins being an asshole, and I have no issue with a match between them.

Goldust and Stardust did weird shit backstage.

Tag Team Titles on The Line: Goldust and Stardust defeated the tag team champions last week in a non-title match, which earned them the match tonight. Natalya needs to get a hold of their agent because hers isn’t very good. They were having a fine match, but the crowd did not seem all that interested at all. One of the Usos twisted his knee, and couldn’t beat the count so Goldust and Stardust won via count out. Goldust seemed to think that this was their one shot for the titles, and demanded a rematch right now. They then attacks the Usos, revealing that the cosmic key corrupts, and has made them evil. The heel turn was needed, we need more clarity and direction in the tag division, and Goldust and Stardust doing goofy ass vignettes backstage wasn’t cutting it.

Rollins was pissed off about Reigns getting involved in his business. Kane then booked Rollins and Kane vs. Reigns for later in the night.

We get a special video where Brock Lesnar discussed making John Cena his bitch. Lesnar is great in these pre-tapes, where he can talk in bad ass sound bytes, while Heyman weaves his magic to sell the rematch. This was great.

Dolph Ziggler vs. Damien Sandow as The Miz: They had said that the Miz was about to face Ziggler again, but Miz brought out his stunt double, Damien Sandow. Yup. They had some back and forth, Ziggler won while the Miz celebrated that his moneymaker was still intact. The crowd was pretty lifeless overall during this match, the crowd did not care and Miz bantering on during commentary did nothing to make me care about this. This was about two minutes long, and felt like ten. This was the first thing I really disliked on the show.

Jerry Lawler Plays Family Psychologist – Make Your Own Jokes: Lawler of all people discussed no one liking families being torn apart, this from the man who cheered on Owen when he turned on Bret (thanks Cook). Brie was all serious and sincere, and even apologized, but Nikki would have none of it. Nikki says that Brie keeps acting like an angel and makes it all about her all the time. They discusses ultrasounds, and the fact that Brie held Nikki back. Nikki ran down Brie’s look, he attempts to save the Earth and Daniel Bryan. Jesus Christ, this is just bad. The acting is bad, the verbiage feels so forced and rehearsed and not like anything they would say in a real argument. The irony of the twin with the implants accusing the other one of being an attention whore is also amazingly funny. Nikki’s point about Brie abandoning her has some merit, but the acting is piss poor and I have no desire to see these ladies feud. Back to back segments that I hated, and the show was going well. Add in some bad editing as they completely whiffed on Nikki slapping Lawler, and had to go to a replay to catch it. And most importantly, what would John Cena think about all of this? But seriously, even if I may not like an angle I can appreciate good work, but this was not good. At all. In any way.

HANDICAP MATCHES ARE BACK – Kane and Rollins vs. Reigns: This was set up earlier in the show, when Reigns suddenly realized that Rollins turned on him and destroyed his friend, Dean Ambrose. This did not last long, as Reigns ran wild most of the time and appeared to have Kane defeated. Rollins attacked with the MITB case for the DQ. They beat down Reigns and revealed the secret pile of cinder blocks again. Reigns made his own save, and tried to throw a cinder block at Rollins, who avoided it and ran for his life. Reigns added a Superman punch to Kane to end the segment, which was met with mixed reaction from the crowd. If they are moving to Rollins vs. Reigns, this is a good starting point because they really gave nothing away. Overall a pretty average segment, which felt great in a way following the previous segments.

Bray Wyatt spoke about shells and some shit, I assume he was reviewing the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie…

Big Show and Mark Henry face Harper and Rowan, again, on Smackdown.

Los Matadores vs. SlaterGator: This was the definition of a filler segment. It was a match between two acts that don’t get much time at all on Raw, having an uninspired match in front of a crowd that mostly did not give a fuck. A lot of segments have been fine tonight, but this one felt worse due to the last of crowd reaction.

And now for the fourth replay of the Hall of Fame forum that kicked off the show. It’s like they wrote for two hours and then realized Raw was three.

When Kofi Met Bo: This was short, the crowd didn’t really react until the mostly botched finish and that was that. Filler at it’s finest. Bo then cut a promo about Swagger failing, so Swagger came out and slammed him and left.

RVD vs. Seth Rollins is set for tomorrow’s Main Event.

The Highlight Reel returns next week, with special guest Randy Orton.

Cena vs. Wyatt: John Cena runs to the ring and does his usual entrance to sell that epic Summerslam beating. I mean, come on, they sold it as the most savage beating of his career, but he is fresh as a daisy here. Come on WWE, is it really that hard. You can sell never giving up without no selling, hell maybe some tape or a wrap to sell things. I actually loved that Wyatt did the lights out in the ring deal instead of his entrance, don’t give the fans a chance to show love to him. They had Cena be serious here, tossing Wyatt around with suplexes and clotheslines. They worked a bit, Harper and Rowan got involved and then Show and Henry made the save.

You know what this means…

The Wyatts vs. Cena, Show and Henry: So we got the Teddy Long special, making things a tag match. At least it makes sense as Show and Henry have been facing these guys and have another match scheduled for this week. The match was fine, Cena won after cleaning house and making Harper tap. He then hit the AA on each member of the Wyatt family to stand tall. To their credit, the company was brave enough to book the Summerslam match, but are afraid to allow Cena to show any vulnerability following that. It’s a much better story to have Cena fight through things to get to Lesnar again, showing that he will never give up while selling the epic beating, but they have opted for the status quo. And the Wyatts have never meant less than they do now.

End scene.

Thanks for reading.

The Tirade
I generally enjoyed the first half of Raw. It was nothing great, but the segments were solid to good and the crowd (while not red hot) seemed pretty involved. Then, for me, things went off a cliff with the Miz/Sandow/Ziggler segment followed by the horrible Bellas talky bit. From there, the crowd had a difficult time getting into anything. The Reigns segment came off cold to me, and the matches that followed (Matadores vs. SlaterGator and Bo vs. Kofi) were heatless. It didn’t help that they came off as filler either.

Cena vs. Wyatt didn’t work for me, the fact that they had Cena act perfectly fine really hurt it. I am fine with him being serious and taking a new approach, but to essentially not sell the Summerslam beating takes away from the great work done there. It’s a shame that they are doing so much to undo the Summerslam booking, it was done so well and it was so outside the box for WWE. But it seems that they are too afraid to allow Cena to look like he has any weaknesses, instead opting to rebuild him as even more a Superman. There was a great story to be told here, but I feel that they have completely thrown it out the window, and in many ways, wasted the match they booked and the beating that Cena took. That beating was something that doesn’t happen to a main event guy in wrestling, thinking back Vader vs. Inoki was similar when Inoki wanted Vader to be a monster and allowed Vader to destroy him. WWE did this on one of their big three PPV events, and by the way they booked tonight’s show, it almost feels as if it never happened.

Last week’s show had a good Heyman promo and the great Rollins vs. Ambrose match to help save it from being a disappointment, this show didn’t have that luxury. The Lesnar/Heyman pre-tape interview was the best thing on the show. Other than that, this show was lifeless and frustrating…

Show Rating: 4.0

As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale…

0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9:Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect

The final rating is not simply an average of the rated segments above. The rating takes them into account as well as the segments that are small but not scored, the flow of the show, the overall booking, build to PPV, crowd reactions, and so on and so forth.

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